̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Jon Roozenbeek

Solidarity drives online virality in a nation under attack, study of Ukrainian social media reveals

fpjl2 — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 09:04:55 +0000

While divisive social media posts get more traction in countries such as the US, a new study shows that celebrating national unity is the way to go viral in Ukraine.

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.

Opinion: ̽��ֱ��failure of Russian propaganda

fpjl2 — Tue, 03 May 2022 09:24:53 +0000

Russia's years-long information war has failed to build support among Russian-speaking Ukrainians, especially in Donbas, argues Dr Jon Roozenbeek.

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

̽��ֱ��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

‘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

Game combats political misinformation by letting players undermine democracy

fpjl2 — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 08:54:50 +0000

̽��ֱ��free-to-play Harmony Square is released to the public today, along with a study on its effectiveness published in the Harvard Misinformation Review.

It has been created by ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge psychologists with support from the US Department of State's Global Engagement Center and Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

̽��ֱ��gameplay is based on 'inoculation theory': that exposing people to a weak 'dose' of common techniques used to spread fake news allows them to better identify and disregard misinformation when they encounter it in future.

In this case, by understanding how to incite political division in the game using everything from bots and conspiracies to fake experts, players get a form of 'psychological vaccine' against the product of these techniques in the real world.

“Trying to debunk misinformation after it has spread is like shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. By pre-bunking, we aim to stop the spread of fake news in the first place,” said Dr Sander van der Linden, Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making lab and senior author of the new study.

Twitter has started using a “pre-bunk” approach: highlighting types of fake news likely to be encountered in feeds during the US election. However, researchers argue that familiarising people with techniques behind misinformation builds a 'general inoculation', reducing the need to rebut each individual conspiracy.

In the 10-minute game Harmony Square, a small town neighbourhood 'obsessed with democracy' comes under fire as players bait the square’s 'living statute', spread falsehoods about its candidate for 'bear controller', and set up a disreputable online news site to attack the local TV anchor.

“ ̽��ֱ��game itself is quick, easy and tongue-in-cheek, but the experiential learning that underpins it means that people are more likely to spot misinformation, and less likely to share it, next time they log on to Facebook or YouTube,” said Dr Jon Roozenbeek, a Cambridge psychologist and lead author of the study.

Over the course of four short levels, users learn about five manipulation techniques: trolling to provoke outrage; exploiting emotional language to create anger and fear; artificially amplifying reach through bots and fake followers; creating and spreading conspiracy theories; polarizing audiences.

In a randomised controlled trial, researchers took 681 people and asked them to rate the reliability of a series of news and social media posts: some real, some misinformation, and even some faked misinformation created for the study, in case participants had already come across real-world examples.

They gave roughly half the sample Harmony Square to play, while the other half played Tetris, and then asked them to rate another series of news posts.

̽��ֱ��perceived reliability of misinformation dropped an average of 16% in those who completed Harmony Square compared to their assessment prior to playing. ̽��ֱ��game also reduced willingness to share fake news with others by 11%. Importantly, the players’ own politics – whether they leaned left or right – made no difference.

Having the 'control group' who played Tetris allowed the scientists to determine an 'effect size' of 0.54 for the study, said Van der Linden.

“ ̽��ֱ��effect size suggests that if the population was split equally like the study sample, 63% of the half that played the game would go on to find misinformation significantly less reliable, compared to just 37% of the half left to navigate online information without the inoculation of Harmony Square,” he said.

̽��ֱ��project follows other playful attempts by CISA to illustrate how 'foreign influencers' use disinformation to target 'hot button' issues. A previous demonstration took the example of whether pineapple belongs on pizza.

However, Harmony Square is based on the findings of a number of studies from the Cambridge team showing how similar gamified approaches to digital literacy significantly reduce susceptibility to fake news and online conspiracies.

̽��ֱ��team behind the game, which includes the Dutch media agency DROG and designers Gusmanson, have recently worked with the UK Cabinet Office on Go Viral!, an intervention that specifically tackles conspiracies around COVID-19.

Harmony Square is geared towards the politically charged misinformation that has plagued many democracies over the last decade. “ ̽��ֱ��aftermath of this week’s election day is likely to see an explosion of dangerous online falsehoods as tensions reach fever pitch,” said van der Linden.

“Fake news and online conspiracies will continue to chip away at the democratic process until we take seriously the need to improve digital media literacy across populations. ̽��ֱ��effectiveness of interventions such as Harmony Square are a promising start,” he said.

A short online game in which players are recruited as a 'Chief Disinformation Officer' and use tactics such as trolling to sabotage elections in a peaceful town has been shown to reduce susceptibility to political misinformation in its users.

Fake news and online conspiracies will continue to chip away at the democratic process until we take seriously the need to improve digital media literacy across populations

Sander van der Linden

Yes

Cambridge game ‘pre-bunks’ coronavirus conspiracies

fpjl2 — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 08:19:20 +0000

Go Viral! is a new game developed by Cambridge psychologists in partnership with the UK government to help fight the ‘infodemic’: the deluge of false information about COVID-19.