Episode Details

Claire Wardle (co-founder and co-director of the Information Futures Lab, and Professor of the Practice at the Brown School of Public Health) joins Ron Steslow to discuss the challenges( and failures) in improving our information landscape

(02:12) Claire’s background and how it led to her research

(05:52) Why terms like “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation” have become less and less useful 

(08:45) How the real world doesn’t fit the framework of “misinformation” and “disinformation”

(10:50) Why we share stories online and how that shapes the information environment

(21:40) The problems that arise from research silos

(25:13) How platforms can include users in content moderation decisions 

(37:07) What role do troll farms actually play in information pollution?

(39:44) How the focus on foreign actors stops researchers, academics, and government officials from reflecting sincerely on their failures

(44:00) Why we share stories online and how that shapes the information environment

(50:28) Improving community-led resistance 

(55:53) How viewing social media users as a product shapes content moderation decisions 

(1:01:30) How AI could impact the information landscape…

Watch Operation InfeKtion from the New York Times: https://bit.ly/3IjJUxo

Read Claire’s piece “Misunderstanding Misinformation”: https://bit.ly/3IlSFa1

Watch the video op-ed where the NYT turned Claire into Adele: https://bit.ly/3MzvNq5

Follow Ron and Claire on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/RonSteslow

https://twitter.com/cward1e

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