International panel studying strategies to address social media misinformation

Researchers with the newly formed International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) have found scientific consensus that content labels and corrective information can help people identify and evaluate social media misinformation-but little consensus about strategies to mitigate its negative effects. In a series of first reports the panel also finds that to address the impacts of misinformation, strategies must be expanded beyond English-language and Western contexts with the use of standardized methods and definitions. Simon Fraser University communication professor Wendy Chun, who serves as vice-chair of the IPIE's methodology panel, says researchers also point to the need for genuine scientific access to data from social media platforms and robust statistical reporting when testing countermeasures to accurately assess the effectiveness of strategies to address misinformation. -As artificial intelligence and other technologies continue to advance, we see an increased need to monitor and design strategies that will improve the global information environment,- says Chun, who holds a Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media and is director of the Digital Democracies Institute (DDI) at SFU. IPIE will be a global source of scientific knowledge about the world's information environment. -We began our work with a global review of thousands of scholarly publications about the effects of misinformation and disinformation on social media to understand the scale of the problem and evaluate strategies to mitigate the impacts.