@jennyallen.bsky.social
Assistant Professor of Technology, Operations, and Statistics @ NYU Stern Interested in Computational Social Science, Digital Persuasion, and Wisdom of Crowds
📣 Yale workshop, Oct 16-17! 📣 How could/should content ranking work? What's new in content moderation? How can platforms promote civility? Hosted by Yale's Institute for Foundations of Data Science (FDS). Great speakers! Submit posters by 9/22! Spread the word! yalefds.swoogo.com/socialalgori...
12.09.2025 12:28 — 👍 27 🔁 15 💬 2 📌 3
It’s not that “the misinfo problem” is made up. It is just harder – and messier – than we thought. Rather than throw up our hands, we MUST adapt our paradigms to meet the moment.
Read more -> www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
2 – Study behavior - not just belief
Many ppl see falsehoods, but who acts and when? Esp harmful acts like dangerous alt medicine or mob vandalism
3 – Test interventions in fuzzy settings, not just black/white true/false content
This means 3 shifts for misinfo researchers:
1–Discover misleading content from the bottom up. e.g. sample climate messages test which increase disbelief in climate change
It’s time to reframe “the misinfo problem”: Instead of “Why do people believe fake news?” we need to study
- What leads to misperceptions
- How do they impact real-world behavior
- What interventions actually help reduce misperceptions
There IS a problem: Misperceptions–eg election denialism, vax and climate skepticism–are common & impactful. But problem is less “Pope Endorses Trump” style fake news, more stories like these 👇
Not false, but misleading – and massively popular (see
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...)
People are worried re fake news, BUT studies show that outright false news is rare w limited impact. Critics say this means misinfo is a not a problem and we should stop studying it.
We disagree!
New in TiCS w @dgrand.bsky.social @gordpennycook.bsky.social
It’s been ~10yrs since misinfo research exploded but our paradigms are stuck in the post-2016 “fake news” model
Time for new approaches:
o True/False → Content that misleads
o Belief → Behavior
o Eval interventions in ambiguous settings
🚨 Predoc at Microsoft Research 🚨
Do you have strong front-end programming and statistics skills but need research experience before heading off to graduate school for a computational social science PhD? Apply now for this summer!
www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...
Thrilled to be hosting the 3rd MEEW (Media Effects Empirical Workshop) at Columbia again. Hope to see some of you there! RSVP link is available at: sites.google.com/view/columbi...
03.04.2025 18:28 — 👍 10 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
New WP!
The illusory truth effect (repetition -> belief) is core to psych of beliefs, & thought to be a deep bias impacting misinfo, persuasion & advertising
Why would cognition include such a flaw? We argue it is a rational adaptation to high-quality info environments 🧵1/
This is my real account! I guess I have a BlueSky impersonator 😮
10.12.2024 00:37 — 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
🚨New WP🚨
We examine news sharing on 7 platforms:
1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news
2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning
3)But low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE, even BlueSky!
osf.io/preprints/ps...
