̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - fake news

̽��ֱ��Misinformation Susceptibility Test

fpjl2 — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 08:32:46 +0000

New 2-minute test launched; developed using ChatGPT technology and validated by expert panel and series of experiments involving thousands of participants. YouGov used the test in US polling, and found Americans know real from fake headlines two-thirds of the time, but worst performers are under-30s who spend most time online.

Rewarding accuracy instead of partisan pandering reduces political divisions over the truth

fpjl2 — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 16:17:56 +0000

Offering a tiny cash reward for accuracy, or even briefly appealing to personal integrity, can increase people’s ability to tell the difference between misinformation and the truth, according to a new study.

̽��ֱ��findings suggest that fake news thrives on social media not only because people are tricked into believing it, but also due to a motivational imbalance: users have more incentive to get clicks and likes than to spread accurate content.

Social psychologists from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and New York ̽��ֱ�� argue that their study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, highlights the “perverse incentives” driving shares on social media – particularly in “divisive political climates” such as the United States.

They say the psychological pull of pandering to one’s own “in-group” by attacking the other side of a social and political divide is a significant – and often neglected – factor for why so many believe and choose to spread misinformation, or disbelieve accurate news.

̽��ֱ��study involved four experiments with a total of over 3,300 people from the United States, with equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. ̽��ֱ��researchers offered half of participants up to one US dollar if they correctly pointed out true or false headlines, and compared the results to those offered no incentive.

This tiny sum was enough to make people 31% better at discerning true from fake news. ̽��ֱ��best results came when participants were asked to identify accurate news that benefited the opposing political party.

In fact, the financial incentive reduced partisan division between Republican and Democrat over the truthfulness of news by around 30%. ̽��ֱ��majority of this shift occurred on the Republican side.

For example, the offer of up to a dollar made Republicans 49% more likely to report that the accurate Associated Press headline ‘Facebook removes Trump ads with symbols once used by Nazis’ was indeed true. A dollar made Democrats 20% more likely to report the Reuters headline 'Plant a trillion trees: U.S. Republicans offer fossil-fuel friendly climate fix' as accurate.

However, in another experiment, researchers inverted the set-up to “mirror the social media environment” by paying participants to identify the headlines likely to get the best reception from members of the same political party. ̽��ֱ��ability to spot misinformation reduced by 16%.

“This is not just about ignorance of facts among the public. It is about a social media business model that rewards the spread of divisive content regardless of accuracy,” said lead author Dr Steve Rathje, who conducted the work while he was a Gates Cambridge Scholar.

“By motivating people to be accurate instead of appealing to those in the same political group, we found greater levels of agreement between Republicans and Democrats about what is actually true.”

Previous research by the same team has shown that attacking political rivals is one of the most effective ways to go viral on Twitter and Facebook.

“Shifting the motivations to post on social media could help rebuild some of the shared reality lost to political polarisation in many nations, including the United States,” said senior author Prof Sander van der Linden, director of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab.

In one of the study’s experiments, half the participants were simply exposed to a short piece of text reminding them that people value truth, and falsehoods can hurt reputations. They were also told they would receive feedback on accuracy rates.

While this did not have the same effect as a small pay out, it still increased the perceived accuracy of true but politically inconvenient news by 25% compared to a control group.

“A short piece of text nudging users to consider the social value of truth could be deployed at scale by social media corporations,” said van der Linden.

Jay Van Bavel, Professor of Psychology at New York ̽��ֱ�� and co-author of the study, said: “It is not possible to pay everyone on the internet to share more accurate information. However, we can change aspects of social media platform design to help motivate people to share content they know to be accurate.”

Providing incentives improved the accuracy of news judgements across the political spectrum, but had a much stronger effect on Republican voters.

̽��ֱ��team point to previous research showing that Republicans tend to believe in and share more misinformation than Democrats. In the latest study, payment incentives brought Republicans far closer to the accuracy levels of Democrats – shrinking the political divide.

“Recent lawsuits have revealed that Fox News hosts shared false claims about ‘stolen’ elections to retain viewers, despite privately disavowing these conspiracy theories. Republican media ecosystems have proved more willing to harness misinformation for profit in recent years,” said Van der Linden, author of the new book Foolproof: why we fall for misinformation and how to build immunity.

Researchers argue that the findings hold lessons for social media companies and the “perverse incentives” driving political polarisation online.

Shifting the motivations to post on social media could help rebuild some of the shared reality lost to political polarisation

Sander van der Linden

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Social media posts around solar geoengineering ‘spill over’ into conspiracy theories

sc604 — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 16:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers analysed tweets 2009 and 2021 tagged with #geoengineering. They used a combination of natural language processing, deep learning and network analysis to explore how public emotions, perceptions and attitudes have changed over a 13-year period.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that there is a large amount of ‘spillover’ between geoengineering and conspiracy theories, especially around ‘chemtrails’, a conspiracy theory dating back to the 1990s. ̽��ֱ��researchers suggest that negative emotions related to geoengineering have a contagion effect, transcending regional boundaries and engaging with wider conspiracies. Their results are reported in the journal iScience.

As the climate crisis worsens, the search for solutions has accelerated. Some potential, albeit untested and controversial, solutions involve geoengineering, where various technologies could be used to alter weather or climate. Solar radiation management (SRM) is one hypothetical geoengineering solution where temperature rise might be addressed by reflecting some sunlight back into space. Possible forms this technology could take include cirrus cloud thinning or spraying aerosols into the stratosphere. But there are few, if any, opportunities for researchers to test these potential solutions.

“ ̽��ֱ��amount of funding that’s been made available for geoengineering research, and especially outdoor experiments, is tiny,” said first author Dr Ramit Debnath, Cambridge Zero Fellow at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “When you ask funders why this is, the reason often given is that the research is too controversial.”

“There are significant and well-founded concerns around geoengineering, but fundamentally we’re interested in furthering knowledge in this area,” said senior author Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, Director of the Centre for Climate Repair in Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “In order to do that, we need to have more informed discussions. We don’t want to dismiss any concerns expressed on social media, but we do want to put them into context.”

“ ̽��ֱ��views expressed on social media don’t necessarily translate directly into wider public views, but there is still a lot we can learn by studying conversations that are happening,” said Debnath. “We wanted to know whether people who were tweeting about geoengineering were in fact, a vocal minority, and if so, what else are these people talking about?”

̽��ֱ��researchers analysed a large dataset of more than 800,000 English-language tweets sent in the 13-year period between 2009 and 2021. ̽��ֱ��researchers used natural language processing techniques to analyse the emotions expressed in the tweets and assigned each tweet a ‘toxicity score’. ̽��ֱ��researchers then conducted a network analysis to determine how tweets about geoengineering interact with other hashtag networks and conspiracy theories.

“ ̽��ֱ��chemtrail conspiracy theory is particularly popular among conspiracy theorists based in the United States, and our analysis found that tweets about chemtrails are the common link between geoengineering and conspiracies,” said Debnath. “Most of these tweets are sent by American users, but they spill over across regional and national boundaries.”

̽��ֱ��‘chemtrail’ conspiracy theory dates back to the 1990s. Believers in this patently false conspiracy allege that condensational trails (contrails) from aircraft are intentionally seeded with various chemical or biological compounds for nefarious purposes including population control or military testing. Those who believe the chemtrails conspiracy theory also allege that aircraft could be used for intentional weather and climate modification.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that the common link between the chemtrails conspiracy and conspiracy theories around geoengineering is the idea that bad actors are ‘weaponising’ the weather with chemicals.

Their analysis also showed that positive emotions rose on global and country scales following events related to SRM governance, and negative emotions increased following the announcement of SRM projects or experiments.

̽��ֱ��researchers say their work could help inform future discussions around SRM and other forms of geoengineering by putting social media discussions in context. “It’s a small echo chamber, but it’s quite a noisy one,” said Debnath.

While the controversy around geoengineering will continue on social media, the team says what they really need is quality data and research. “There are risks associated with geoengineering, but how do these compare with the risks of letting climate change continue unabated?” said Fitzgerald. “I worry that knowledge hasn’t progressed in this area. What happens if some rogue entity decides to go for a huge deployment of SRM, and people end up suffering because of it? This is why it’s so important to have informed discussions backed up by quality research.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say their study provides a data-driven glimpse into the structure of online climate misinformation that has a strong contagion effect, leading to strengthening of conspiracy theories in the public domain. Understanding such links with respect to climate action is critical for the design of counteraction strategies.

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Cambridge Centre for Climate Repair, Cambridge Zero and Quadrature Climate Foundation, and the Google Cloud Climate Innovation Challenge Award. This study is part of an ongoing project co-led by Dr Ramit Debnath with Cambridge Zero on improving public understanding of climate change.

Ramit Debnath will be speaking about climate change misinformation at the Cambridge Festival on 30th March.

Reference:
Ramit Debnath et al. ‘Conspiracy spillovers and geoengineering.’ iScience (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106166

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have analysed more than 800,000 tweets and found that negative emotions expressed about geoengineering – the idea that the climate can be altered using technology – can easily fall into conspiracy.

Milamai via Getty Images

Person using a smartphone

Yes

Foolproof: A psychological vaccine against fake news

fpjl2 — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 10:17:34 +0000

In an edited extract from his new book ‘Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity’, Prof Sander van der Linden takes us through his work to “inoculate” people against falling for fake news.

How to 'inoculate' millions against misinformation on social media

fpjl2 — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 18:05:07 +0000

Briefly exposing social media users to tricks behind misinformation boosts awareness of dangerous online falsehoods – even amid intense ‘noise’ of world’s second-most visited website.

Research exposes long-term failure of Russian propaganda

fpjl2 — Tue, 03 May 2022 08:36:45 +0000

A study of thousands of stories from media outlets churning out propaganda in Ukrainian Donbas following Russia’s first invasion suggests that Kremlin disinformation has long neglected any coherent or convincing messaging to foster support for Russia in the war-torn region.

After 2014, when news media in the so-called 'People’s Republics' of Donetsk and Luhansk was forcibly taken over by Russian-backed insurgents, efforts to instil a pro-Russian 'identity' were lazy and half-baked, and dwindled to nothing within months.

This is according to ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researcher Dr Jon Roozenbeek, who says that – based on his analysis of over four years of media content – such limited efforts likely had little effect on the consciousness of Russian-speaking Ukrainians in Donbas.

For example, Vladimir Putin has long trumpeted the idea of “Novorossiya”, or ‘New Russia’, in an attempt to resurrect terminology once used to describe Donbas during the reign of Catherine the Great, when it temporarily sat within the Russian Empire, and claim the region belongs in Russia.

While waves of propaganda demonised Ukraine’s government, the study shows that Novorossiya was hardly mentioned, and Russian disinformation lacked any real 'in-group' story, the ‘us’ to oppose a ‘them’ – a fundamental flaw in any attempt to generate lasting division, says Roozenbeek.

Instead of identity-building, almost the entire Russian propaganda effort relied on portraying the leadership in Kyiv as fascistic – the basis of outlandish “denazification” claims – to create what psychologists call an 'outgroup' on which to focus hostility.

However, as Russia shifts its war onto Donbas, Roozenbeek cautions that it may turn to spreading Novorossiya-style propaganda narratives in the region and far beyond to justify land seizure and war atrocities, and claim that these actions are supported by local populations.

He calls for a pre-emptive global debunking – or ‘pre-bunking’ – of the notion that ideological projects such as ‘Novorossiya’ have deep roots in the region, and that the people of Donbas have ever bought into these myths.

Otherwise, he says, we risk such falsehoods taking hold in the West via pundits and politicians who tow the Kremlin line. Roozenbeek’s findings are publicly available for the first time today.

“Eight years of Russian propaganda have failed to provide a convincing alternative to Ukrainian nationhood in eastern Ukraine,” said Roozenbeek.

“ ̽��ֱ��Kremlin's decision to favour outgroup animosity over in-group identity building, and its vast overestimation of the extent to which its lies about non-existent Ukrainian ‘fascists’ promoted pro-Russian sentiment, are key reasons why the invasion has been a strategic and logistical disaster.”

“If the nonsense of Novorossiya or other half-baked ideological narratives start to spread in the West, it could end up being used to pressure Ukraine into relinquishing large swathes of its territory, as a drawn-out war in the Donbas causes the global community’s nerves to fray,” he said.

For his PhD research, Roozenbeek used ‘natural language processing’ to algorithmically comb through over 85,000 print and online articles from 30 local and regional media outlets across Luhansk and Donetsk between 2014 and 2017, charting the patterns of content through use of key words and phrases in the wake of the first Russian invasion of Ukraine.

While half the coverage in print media remained 'business as usual' – sport, entertainment, etc – some 36% was dedicated to the 'shaping of identity' via propaganda. Much of this was done through parallels to World War II: the Donbas war as an attack by Ukrainian “neo-Nazis”.

Only one newspaper paid any attention to Putin’s adopted concept of “Novorossiya”. Obvious opportunities to leverage history for identity-building propaganda were missed, such the fact that part of Donbas declared itself a Soviet republic in 1918, or indeed any mention of the Soviet Union.

“Description of an in-group identity that situated Donbas as part of the ‘Russian World’ were almost entirely absent from the region’s print media,” said Roozenbeek.

This pattern was largely replicated in online news media, which were arguably more ferocious in attempts to demonise the 'outgroup' Kyiv government – including using English language to try and spread propaganda internationally – while ignoring a pro-Russian 'this is us' identity.

Roozenbeek found a handful of stories covering “patriotic” cultural events organised by the Kremlin-owned leadership in Luhansk, but even here the in-group identity was “lazily assumed”, he says, rather than established.

All this despite the fact that a 'blueprint' strategy for propaganda in Donbas explicitly called for the image of a benevolent Russia to be cultivated by emphasising the 'Russian World' philosophy.

This strategy, leaked to German newspapers in 2016, is widely believed to be the work of Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s former propagandist-in-chief, often dubbed Putin’s puppet master. It describes the need to construct and promote an ideology of 'cultural sovereignty' in Russian-occupied Donbas, one that can act as a stepping stone to statehood.

“Despite the importance given to constructing identity and ideology after the Russian-backed takeover in Luhansk and Donetsk, including as directed by the Kremlin, very little in-group identity was promoted,” said Roozenbeek.

“What identity-building propaganda I could find in Donbas after 2014 was vague, poorly conceived, and quickly forgotten. Political attempts to invoke Novorossiya were cast aside by the summer of 2015, but such weak propaganda suggests they didn’t stand much chance anyway.”

“Putin has severely underestimated the strength of Ukrainian national identity, even in Donbas, and overestimated the power of his propaganda machine on the occupied areas of Ukraine.”

Roozenbeek’s research was conducted for his PhD between 2016 and 2020, and will feature in his forthcoming book Influence, Information and War in Ukraine, due out next year as part of the Society for the Psychology Study of Social Issues book series Contemporary Social Issues, published by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press.

A study of the propaganda that flooded Donbas for years reveals a failure to build pro-Russian 'in-group' identities in the region, despite Putin’s claims of support.

What identity-building propaganda I could find in Donbas after 2014 was vague, poorly conceived, and quickly forgotten

Jon Roozenbeek

Marco Constantinou

Putin print manipulation

Yes

‘Pre-bunk’ tactics reduce public susceptibility to COVID-19 conspiracies and falsehoods, study finds

fpjl2 — Wed, 12 May 2021 09:18:46 +0000

A short online game designed to fight conspiracies about COVID-19 boosts people’s confidence in detecting misinformation by increasing their ability to perceive its “manipulativeness” compared to genuine news, according to a study.

Go Viral!, developed by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab in partnership with the UK Cabinet Office and media agency DROG, was launched last autumn as part of the UK government’s efforts to tackle coronavirus falsehoods circulating online.

̽��ֱ��five-minute game puts people in the shoes of a purveyor of fake pandemic news, encouraging players to create panic by spreading misinformation about COVID-19 using social media – all within the confines of the game.

Researchers say that, by giving people this taste of the techniques used to disseminate fake news, it acts as an inoculant: building a psychological resistance against malicious falsehoods by raising awareness of how misinformation works.

“While fact-checking is vital work, it can come too late. Trying to debunk misinformation after it spreads is often a difficult if not impossible task,” said Prof Sander van der Linden, Director of the Social Decision-Making Lab at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��.

“Go Viral! is part of a new wave of interventions that aim to ‘pre-bunk’. By preemptively exposing people to a microdose of the methods used to disseminate fake news, we can help them identify and ignore it in the future.”

̽��ֱ��latest findings on the game’s effectiveness, published in the journal Big Data and Society, are accompanied by research on another COVID-19 “prebunking” intervention used by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

UNESCO deployed infographics across social media highlighting tropes common to COVID conspiracy theories, such as claims of a “secret plot” or that the virus was spread intentionally, as part of their #ThinkBeforeSharing campaign.

“By exposing people to the methods used to produce fake news we can help create a general ‘inoculation’, rather than trying to counter each specific falsehood,” said study lead author and Cambridge Gates Scholar Melisa Basol.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge researchers found the UNESCO approach also proved effective, albeit with a smaller effect size than the proactive game.

̽��ֱ��Go Viral! project began with seed funding from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s COVID-19 rapid response fund, and was then supported and backed by the UK Cabinet Office and promoted by the World Health Organisation and UN.

̽��ֱ��game has now been played over 400,000 times in a variety of languages – including Italian, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Brazilian Portuguese – since its October launch.

Players try and gain “likes” by promoting noxious posts on COVID-19, harnessing propaganda techniques such as fraudulent expertise and the use of emotionally charged language to stoke outrage and fear.

̽��ֱ��final stage sees players “go viral” when they push a baseless conspiracy theory that explodes online and ignites nationwide protests.

For the new study, researchers used a sample of 3,548 players over the age of 18, including native speakers of three languages in which the game is available: English, German and French.

Study participants were shown 18 social media posts – nine containing information from credible news sources, and high-quality versions of COVID-19 conspiracies making up the rest – and asked the extent to which they felt manipulated by the framing and content of each one.

Roughly a third of the study participants then played Go Viral!, while another third – a control group – played Tetris for the same amount of time, and the final group read UNESCO’s set of “prebunking” infographics. Lastly, everyone was given the same set of news items to rate, a mixture of real and fake.

Just over half (55%) the Tetris players got better at spotting the falsehoods, little better than chance – suggesting many were guessing.

However, 74% of the “pre-bunked” Go Viral! players got much better at sensing when they were being manipulated by the misinformation: a 19 percentage point increase over the control group.

̽��ֱ��infographics generated a more modest but still useful six percentage point increase in manipulation detection compared to the control (61% vs 55%).

When it came to confidence in their ability to spot fake news going forward, only 50% of the Tetris players said it had increased – no better than chance – whereas 67% of Go Viral! players felt they were less likely to get duped in the future.

In a follow-up survey one week after the single play of the game, participants were asked to rate a further set of real and fake social media posts about COVID-19. Go Viral! players were still rating COVID-19 misinformation as significantly more manipulative, while the effects of the UNESCO infographics had faded.

“Both interventions are fast, effective and easily scalable, with the potential to reach millions of people around the world,” said Dr Jon Roozenbeek, study co-lead author from Cambridge’s Department of Psychology.

“Interestingly, our findings also show that the active inoculation of playing the game may have more longevity than passive inoculations such as reading the infographics.”

“COVID-19 falsehoods and conspiracies pose a real threat to vaccination programmes in almost every nation. Every weapon in our arsenal should be used to fight the fake news that poses a threat to herd immunity. Pre-bunking initiatives have a crucial role to play in that global fight,” Roozenbeek said.

Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO, added: “Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� has provided solid backing for 'pre-bunking' misinformation and conspiracy theories propagated and reinforced during the pandemic, which have real-life consequences undermining trust in science and fueling hate speech.

“In this context, UNESCO’s work in education and media and information literacy is even more critical to strengthen learners’ digital citizenship.”

Latest research on digital interventions deployed by UK government and UNESCO suggests that exposing people to a “microdose” of techniques used by misinformation merchants helps “inoculate” them against fake news about the pandemic.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� has provided solid backing for 'pre-bunking' misinformation and conspiracy theories propagated and reinforced during the pandemic

Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO

Screen shots of Go Viral! on the left, and an example of UNESCO's #ThinkBeforeSharing campaign on the right.

Yes

Cambridge psychologist helps Facebook fight climate change misinformation

fpjl2 — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 16:53:32 +0000

Facebook has sought the help of experts on anti-environment propaganda, including a Cambridge psychologist, to improve their Climate Science Information Centre and help more of the platform’s almost three billion monthly users find the latest accurate climate science data.

Dr Sander van der Linden is one of three experts on behaviour and communication to have been drafted in by the social media giant to advise on how best to debunk the toxic myths about global heating that spread like wildfire on digital platforms such as Facebook.

Along with academics from Yale and George Mason universities, Van der Linden has helped Facebook to expand their digital Centre, which connects its users with vetted, proven research from the world’s leading climate change organisations, including the UN Environment programme.

Van der Linden and colleagues worked with teams at Facebook to design the most effective types of communication for the platform’s misinformation debunking initiative, including a section that challenges damaging climate change myths, such as the belief that global warming is just part of a natural cycle of temperature fluctuation, and that more atmospheric carbon dioxide greens the planet.

Already available in the US and parts of Europe, today also marks Facebook’s expansion of their Climate Science Information Centre’s availability to other major nations including Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Spain.

“Climate change is an existential threat, which makes misinformation about climate change an existential threat,” said Van der Linden, Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab at the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Psychology.

“ ̽��ֱ��spread of damaging falsehoods endangers the level of international cooperation required to prevent catastrophic global warming. Facebook is in a unique position to counter the circulation of online misinformation, and the new climate ‘mythbusting’ section is an important step toward debunking dangerous falsehoods."

“We hope this collaboration will help people the world over to better discern fact from fiction,” Van der Linden said.

In an article published to Facebook’s Newsroom, the company contends that fighting climate change starts with 'fighting the misinformation around it'. 'We will keep working to expand the Climate Science Information Centre, providing trusted information from verifiable sources, and, we hope, inspiring people to take action in their community,' it states.

Dr Anthony Leiserowitz from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, who worked with Van der Linden and Dr John Cook from George Mason ̽��ֱ��, said that while misinformation about climate change long predates the internet, it has been “greatly amplified in our new digital world”.

In an additional UK-specific trial, Facebook says it will automatically label posts containing climate change misinformation with one of several tags that not only direct users to the new Centre, but issue them with a short corrective message – such as the fact that 97% of the world’s scientific community are in agreement about the threat of global heating.

Van der Linden has previously conducted research showing that presenting facts in the form of a statement about consensus can encourage agreement, and work right across the political spectrum to pull people's opinions closer to the truth.

He has even showed that facts about scientific consensus can be used to 'pre-bunk' – pre-emptively debunk – the public against climate misinformation, in a form of psychological 'inoculation'. More recently he has worked with colleagues and the UK Cabinet Office to adapt these techniques to tackle conspiracy theories about COVID-19.

Facebook says that, in nations where its Climate Science Information Centre is yet to become available, the platform will direct people to the UN Environment Programme website. Nancy Groves from the United Nations said that it aims to continue working with Facebook “to dispel myths and to provide access to the latest science on the climate emergency.”

Social media giant turns to behaviour and communication expert Dr Sander van der Linden to help them tackle the dangerous anti-science myths that circulate online.

Facebook is in a unique position to counter the circulation of online misinformation

Sander van der Linden

Yes