Approaches to Addressing Those Susceptible to Mis- and Disinformation

The next speaker in this fast-paced final ECREA PolCom 2023 conference session is Iuliana Calin, whose interest is in the susceptibility to disinformation. What is new about this today, given the long history of mis- and disinformation throughout history? Iuliana particularly notes the impact of AI and algorithms, of emotions, and of cognitive biases, and aims to build a psycho-social profile of the people most susceptible to disinformation, in order to develop communication strategies to address them.

Her study builds on a survey of 150 Romanian respondents, and tested participants’ susceptibility to disinformation, as well as several other personal traits, attitudes, and media practices. Susceptibilty was correlated somewhat with myside bias and conspiracist mentality, and more weakly with several other traits; there were also several correlations with personal values (values like family, health, honour, freedom, and truth led to greater resilience).

This leads Iuliana to recommend short, simple, and correct messages; an absence of argumentation; affirmative headlines rather than questions; promotions of scientific discoveries; empathetic debunking; and a number of other communicative strategies for engaging with people who are susceptible to disinformation. These might be relevant to platform operators, public authorities, and media communicators in their efforts.

And that was it, because my laptop ran out of battery before the final speaker in the session and the conference. A lovely and stimulating event – many thanks to the team at the Weizenbaum-Institut for their expert hosting efforts.