Claire Wardle

I had a great chat last week with @cward1e.bsky.social, looking back at the growth of open source investigation from when it was just a small bunch of people trying to figure stuff out, how the counter-disinformation community formed out of that, and why it's causing us all so many headaches now.

Really looking forward to chatting with @eliothiggins.bsky.social tomorrow to discuss the insane journey we've been on since we first 'met' in 2011/2012, when we both started working on social media verification efforts. Little did we know how bananas everything would get.

How we got here: the rise, backlash and future of counter disinformation. Bellingcat Stage Talk , Thursday 29/1, 5pm CET/11am EST Discord.com/invite/bellingcat . Eliot Higgins founder Bellingcat, Claire Wardle, Associate Professor Cornell University

Don’t know what to trust on your feed? How did we get here? Next Thursday, @eliothiggins.bsky.social and @cward1e.bsky.social unpack the rise, backlash and future of counter-disinformation. Join us for a live Q&A on Discord. 11am EST / 5pm CET discord.gg/ApEnkSK6?eve...

Welcome to Sensemaking Distortion A blog about how our ability make sense of everything is profoundly distorted by digital and social media.

I've been doing a soft launch of my new Substack, Sensemaking Distortion, a blog about how our ability to make sense of the world around us is being profoundly distorted by digital and social media. I just published the Welcome post this morning. open.substack.com/pub/katestar...

Seeking nominations: The CIP Award for Impact & Excellence recognizes outstanding contributions and achievements that advance civic health and promote an informed society by helping individuals, communities, and institutions navigate complex information challenges.

Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

The Indicator Guide to hunting for documents and files in open buckets, servers, and directories How to find interesting and potentially confidential documents sitting on a publicly-accessible server or website

A major perk for @indicator.media members is our monthly workshop. This Friday, @craigsilverman.bsky.social will walk folks through how to look for valuable documents hiding in open air, the topic of our latest guide. Upgrade to paid now to attend the workshop!

We have to (have to!) break this "chat shit for money" version of the internet.

Not surprising, but still very important to document.

As someone on a county library board: we track checkouts, we track event attendance, hell we track door counts. Just visit your local library and show them some love

X to test using Community Notes to find the posts everyone likes | TechCrunch X is piloting a new feature that will help to identify the platform's best posts. The system is similar to how Community Notes fact-checking works.

X is considering exporting its Community Notes bridging algorithm to the main feed. This...might not be a bad idea?

techcrunch.com/2025/07/24/x...

Mis(sing) information: The impact of disappearing archives and data sources – Full Fact Discover how digital decay and disappearing archives weaken public scrutiny and fuel misinformation.

I wrote somethingfor @fullfact.org about the ways in which the disappearing archive makes their work even harder but more important. I'm a trustee & continue to be amazed at their resiliency in an age of AI slop and attacks against those who investigate accuracy.
fullfact.org/technology/m...

🚨 Now out in Nature Human Behaviour 🚨

We show that following the news on WhatsApp or Instagram (N = 3,395 🇫🇷🇩🇪) increases current affairs knowledge, participants’ ability to discern true from false news stories, awareness of true news stories, as well as trust in the news.

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Community expertise is essential for monitoring potential information harms, but current “social listening” efforts often bring community input late in the process. It’s time to update our tracking approaches to foreground that shift. @cward1e.bsky.social and I offer one approach in a new paper.

Portugal is taking online disinformation and fake news seriously. As part of a broader attempt to encourage media literacy, it’s offering 15-18 year olds a free digital subscription to a range of respected newspapers and magazines as well as online upstarts that don’t spread lies. (Monocle)

Family uses AI to create video for deadly Chandler road rage victim's own impact statement Christopher Pelkey was killed in a road rage incident in Chandler in 2021, but last month, artificial intelligence brought him back to life during his killer’s sentencing hearing.

“It was the first time in Arizona judicial history — and possibly nationwide — that AI has been used to create a deceased victim’s own impact statement.”

Thank you so much. I’m just sorry I had to run off so quickly. I hope you have a wonderful conference.

Conference bingo card to help attendees connect with each other.

Quaker Meeting House with wooden pews and green cushions.

I’m about to give a talk at the Information Architecture conference in Philly in the beautiful Quaker meeting house. I love the bingo card (I know what Wawa is and I have a humanities BA)

The little-known database at the heart of Kennedy’s vaccine conspiracy theory Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long claimed a secret database holds the truth about vaccines and autism. Now that he's in charge, his anti-vaccine supporters wonder — can he deliver?

OK I wrote about the database
www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

The very smart, very lovely @whitneyphillips.bsky.social has a new book out. As ever she's thinking about things in very different, but very important ways.

YouTube video by #DogShirtTV The Information Animal with Alicia Wanless

On today’s #DogShirtTV, @benjaminwittes.bsky.social & @hollybfletcher.bsky.social welcome Alicia Wanless @lageneralista.ca to discuss her new book, The Information Animal, a historical & contemporary survey of human information consumption. #InformationEcosystem

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c29o...

To Build a Better Democracy, Start by Rethinking Your Relationship to the Internet | TechPolicy.Press Ivan Sigal writes that many of us, caught in the amnesia of our endless scrolling, seem to have forgotten that we control our attention.

Ivan Sigal writes that many of us, caught in the amnesia of our endless scrolling, seem to have forgotten that we control our attention. But if enough of us act, he says, we will create the demand signal that builders of technologies that privilege human agency need to validate their work.

Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis is a rare and deadly complication of… | American Academy of Pediatrics Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis is a rare and deadly complication of the measles virus in which the viral infection will reemerge years after the initial…

More of this is needed. In health communication, a story narrative is so important to engage an audience... It's why big-on- emotion, empty-on-fact antivax efforts are so effective. This sobering story told by a physician highlights using the power of narrative for good and in a respectful way. 🛟

Wired is dropping paywalls for FOIA-based reporting. Others should follow As the administration does its best to hide public records from the public, Wired magazine is stepping up to help stem the secrecy

They're called public records for a reason. Starting today, WIRED will *stop paywalling* articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, becoming the first publication to partner with @freedom.press to offer this for our new coverage.

He Used to Make Videos About NYC Real Estate. Then He Became Radicalized by the Right. Cash Jordan made a name for himself showing off New York apartments. Now his YouTube channel is all crime and conspiracy. What happened?

For Slate, I dived into what a viral real estate influencer in NYC may reveal our increasingly polluting news environment of, and how a profitable business model of amplifying polarizing political and cultural content is making it even worse.

slate.com/technology/2...

Full text of Jelani Cobb's 2025 Reuters Memorial Lecture: Trust issues. Credibility, credulity and journalism in a time of crisis On 10 March the Columbia Journalism Dean delivered the 2025 Reuters Memorial Lecture. Here's the transcript of his talk.

"Our problem is not simply that the public does not trust us, it’s that they do trust other dishonest brokers. We are not just witnessing a crisis of credibility, we are experiencing a crisis of credulity as well." — Jelani Cobb. reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/full-te...

Let it sink in.

Really wild that there was a moment in like 2011 where we believed that social media, and Twitter specifically, were going to lead to a new golden age of democracy and human rights.

The attention economy is devouring politics Social scientists need to understand how. As do we all.

The attention economy is devouring politics. Social scientists need to understand how. As do we all. www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-attent...

4:00 pm – The Good, Bad and the Ugly: The Role of #GenAI in Undermining but (potentially) Rebuilding Trust

Renee Cummings, David Rand, and Claire Wardle take a broad look at how AI tools are shaping our trust in the media we consume and the future. @dgrand.bsky.social @cward1e.bsky.social