As we near the end of 2023, MediaWell would like to highlight our work from the past year. The essays and articles we have published in 2023 worked to synthesize research on how to mitigate the influence of false, misleading, or hateful narratives online, build resilient democratic institutions, and empower communities to inform themselves. In the past year, we have published work that has provided insight into the global exchange of online hate speech, including Dhiraj Murthy’s essay on the global reach of racist and right-wing misinformation on niche social media platforms and Sophie Maddocks’s research review focusing on image-based abuse and the threat it poses to privacy, safety, and speech.
We also published an essay series exploring the dynamics of trust in democratic institutions, stemming from a research workshop that SSRC held with the UK Economic and Social Research Council. One of these essays, written by Camille Burge-Hicks, explores emotionally charged misinformation that targets racial groups and how this affects their involvement in politics. The Measuring Media Accuracy essay series published in the later part of the year further examined misinformation and trust by considering different databases, fact-checking evaluations, newspaper coverage, and framing of issues in media. Lastly, we published a research review on political polarization by Erin Oittinen and Brooke Molokach; the review explored the research on how to understand antidemocratic political polarization and the strategies that could be used to counter it.
The full list of articles we have published is below. We will see you in the new year!
Articles:
- Measuring Media Accuracy | Essay Series | By Stuart Soroka, Christopher Wlezien, Robert Bond, Kasper Welbers, Amber Boydstun, Jill Laufer, and Leticia Bode
- “They’re Coming to Take over Our Country”: Researching Global Circuits of Racist Misinformation | By Dhiraj Murthy
- Reflecting on the State of Digital Media Data Research | By Josephine Lukito
- Trust and Audience Behavior in the Hybrid Media System | By Karin Wahl-Jorgensen
- How Feeling Misinformation Shapes Politics | By Camille Burge-Hicks
- Changing the Focus on Fighting Vaccine Hesitancy: From Correcting Misinformation to Building Trust in Official Information | By Juan Carlos Rodríguez Raga
Research Reviews:
- “Vicious, Hateful, and Divisive” Partisans: Understanding and Countering Antidemocratic Political Polarization | By Erin Oittinen and Brooke Molokach
- Image-Based Abuse: A Threat to Privacy, Safety, and Speech | By Sophie Maddocks
With appreciation,
The MediaWell Team