My Research Interests
The digital media environment has fundamentally changed how we interact with the world around us. Social media in particular have changed how we consume news and information. Information producers have to compete in an increasingly busy environment, experimenting with new modalities and approaches to break through the online clutter and capture attention. Audiences have the increasingly difficult task of attempting to distinguish between low and high quality information, which can require paying close attention to the source of a message and their likely goals. This chaotic environment creates real opportunities for misinformation, but also offers people the opportunity to make substantive changes to improve the information environment not just for themselves but for everyone. I am interested in investigating how people decide to engage with – or avoid – contentious social, health, science, and political issues, and how we as social scientists can improve these interactions.
More specifically, my research addresses several related areas:
Correcting Misinformation on Social Media
Concerns about the prevalence of misinformation online are longstanding. While we can debate just how much misinformation there is online, we do know it can be consequential and thus we need to be thinking about how to identify and mitigate its harms. I have worked to define misinformation and explored its frequency on Twitter and Pinterest. Given the problem of misinformation, with Dr. Leticia Bode I have argued that we need a Swiss cheese approach to respond, layering many different solutions that can each mitigate but not solve the problem. Within this framework, we have pioneered the idea of observed correction, whereby people see other people sharing misinformation on social media being corrected – and these corrections tend to lead people to update their own attitudes to reflect correct beliefs as a result. Our studies have suggested that the Facebook related stories algorithm can successful debunk myths about the safety of GMO foods (but not whether vaccines cause autism), and that other users on Facebook can have a similar effect. In the context of the Zika virus in 2016, we found that such user corrections work better with a link to an expert source, and can be effective both on Twitter and Facebook. But while two users may be required to correct misperceptions, a single tweet from the CDC is effective in mitigating misperceptions without harming the CDC’s credibility. Notably, however, user tone – either incivility or affirmative – did not affect the success of user corrections in reducing misperceptions, although we still encourage people to be empathetic and understanding in their responses.
For observed correction to be consequential, we need people who are willing to correct publicly on social media. But while people tell us they value correction on social media, many fewer do so. We need to do more to help people feel comfortable and able to REACT to misinformation when they see it. Observed correction can offer a lot of benefits as compared to other mitigation strategies: it empowers users to respond to misinformation, remains flexible to changes in social media platforms, and will always be required as a last step in responding to misinformation.
News Literacy
Presenting on news media literacy at ICA 2015 with Melissa Tully.
For all its benefits, observed correction happens after misinformation is already spreading. We also need to be considering preemptive strategies to improve their ability to interact with complicated media environments, and news literacy fits the bill. But a difficulty with this approach is that news literacy education is traditionally limited to the classroom, which necessarily leaves out many people in need of the skills, and divorces these lessons from their actual experience with media. Initially, my interest in news literacy was spurred when Dr. Melissa Tully, Dr. Hernando Rojas, and I began investigating whether media literacy training can be moved outside the classroom. Our initial research suggested that such training can limit hostile media perceptions for neutral news content, although it may also exacerbate polarization when paired with partisan environments. Dr. Tully and I have continued to develop news literacy messages that mimic public service announcements (PSAs) to see whether particular messages are effective in promoting democratic engagement and reducing selective exposure.
However, my interest in news literacy messages has expanded to consider whether they help people recognize misinformation on social media or become more responsive to highly credible corrective information. We found that familiarity with and value for news literacy was associated with skepticism of social media (in line with other studies suggesting news literacy knowledge can reduce beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation). Merging two research teams together, Dr. Bode, Dr. Tully, and I have found mixed evidence for the success of news literacy messages embedded in social media feeds in helping people recognize misinformation when they see it – and also did not make exposure corrections from experts more effective in reducing misperceptions. We continue our efforts to determine which news literacy messages are most successful in social media environments.
Social Media and Expression
Social media are unique in their ability to engage people with content they might otherwise avoid. For some, social media offer yet another way to find and discuss a range of news and political content, but for many, such exposure is often incidental, occurring through the wide social contacts that inhabit these spaces. For those already interested in a topic, social media appear to offer new opportunities for people to consume news content and participate in the political process, yet also present unique challenges in an increasingly competitive space for limited attention. My projects in social media span examining how protest movements are using social media for online activism, the spread of health narratives on social media, how (some) young adults are using social media for news and politics and how this responds to and shapes norms of political expression online, and what types of political and news content young adults actually pay attention to – and how well they can report such attention.
Disagreement and Controversial Issues
Social media are likely to be particularly valuable for facilitating discussion across lines of difference on controversial issues across a range of domains, including health, science, and politics. In general, an individual’s pre-existing attitudes often limits the types of information they tend to seek out and engage with, with most people expressing a preference for agreeable content. My research has investigated questions such as how structural choices and audience motivations can influence selective exposure and learning and whether incongruent political quizzes can sharpen political identity across a range of issues, with a special emphasis on climate change communication and the Zika virus. I am interested in exploring who sees and responds to political disagreement in social media, and whether individual differences complicate the value for and willingness to engage in future discourse on public issues.
Work with Me
Diverse Methods
Across these projects, I am always testing new methods to better understand the questions of the types of content people are engaging with, their motivations for selecting some content over others, and the implications such choices have for democratic outcomes. Although I often prefer experimental designs to be able to speak to media effects, I use a wide range of methods depending on the question I want to answer. This can include content analysis, survey data, qualitative interviews, eye tracking to precisely gauge attention to social media content, and harvesting social media data to uncover information flows on diverse issues. I’m always looking for new ways to better represent people’s actual media experiences.
Loving Collaboration
Youth Political Socialization team
Throughout my work, I tend to prefer working with teams of scholars to better address and answer these complicated research questions. I find that working with my colleagues forces me to consider alternative answers for my research questions, bridging together approaches and theories to better understand a complicated media landscape. It also allows for more sophisticated inquiries – harvesting millions of tweets about health issues, coding thousands of YouTube videos, creating social media posts about news and politics, or producing media literacy PSAs is much better done in a team!