UB’s Center for Information Integrity hosting symposium exploring solutions to misinformation on social media

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The University at Buffalo Center for Information Integrity (CII) will host a symposium at the Buffalo Marriott Niagara on April 21 from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. exploring ways to control misinformation on social media platforms.

“Misinformation in Social Media and What to do About it” features panels of UB experts and visiting scholars addressing questions related to why platforms that would seem to cultivate a reputation for reliability instead, by design, disseminate and amplify misinformation.

The symposium is free and open to the public. A registration link along with a complete list of talks and participants is available online.

“There is nothing more important right now in our media environment than addressing the problem of misinformation,” says David Castillo, PhD, professor of Romance languages and literatures, and co-director of CII. “The logic behind the problem is ingrained in the profit-driven business models of these platforms that have developed and unleashed powerful algorithms that amplify misinformation in order to engage the largest possible audience for the longest amount of time.

“The algorithms are good at recognizing and amplifying sensationalism, and they’re getting better at it every day with what they learn about user behavior through every interaction,” says Castillo.

The problem of misinformation is even worse than it appears on the surface because of a disproportionate amplification, according to Cynthia Stewart, PhD, CII program manager.

“The platforms not only allow people to post false information, they prioritize it over the truth because posts that cause outrage get attention,” says Stewart. “False information has the greatest voice on these platforms because the algorithms that control the volume amplify misinformation and ensure that it represents the loudest content.”

The discussion surrounding issues related to social media content is often mistakenly framed as a free speech issue, according to Castillo.

“Algorithms that are trained to amplify what’s false at the expense of the truth is not a free speech issue, and saying so inaccurately conflates regulation with First Amendment rights. This is not about restricting what people post to social media, it’s about making social media platforms responsible for the information that they amplify.”

Castillo says it’s not primarily a technical problem. It’s a human challenge, and the symposium’s structure, with contributors from multiple disciplines, represents a model for the kind of community-minded convergence approach that is at the core of CII’s mission to effectively address misinformation and disinformation:

• Jane Bambauer, JD, University of Arizona professor of law, will begin her talk with an account of social media as a vice, simultaneously a source of joy or misery, depending on the context and circumstances, with many of the complaints about social media being either unconvincing descriptions or reformulations of the vice problem.
• Naniette Coleman, PhD candidate in sociology at UC Berkeley, is the founder of The Coleman Research Lab, one of the top three academic initiatives editing Wikipedia. Hundreds of Coleman’s students, mostly women who are also people of color, have led the rapid expansion of information related to cyber security on Wikipedia by correcting published pages and translating that content in other languages. Her lab has written or edited articles that have received 241 million views. She’ll discuss her experiences leading the lab and how disinformation can be tackled in the classroom.
• John Villasenor, PhD, UCLA professor of electrical engineering, law, public policy, and management, will argue that proposals for self-regulatory and formal-regulatory frameworks should be designed in ways that better recognize the role of uncertainty.

In addition to the three keynote speakers, the symposium features several UB panelists:

• Dalia Antonia Caraballo Muller, PhD, associate professor of history, and founder of The impossible Project, which teaches students to “learn to think at the limits of the possible, together,” and Yotam Ophir, PhD, assistant professor of communication, who will moderate a discussion on misinformation and extremism with Mark Frank, PhD, professor of communication, Lindsay Hahn, PhD, assistant professor of communication, Matt Kenyon, MFA, associate professor of art, and Yini Zhang, PhD, assistant professor of communication.

“Misinformation is a problem affecting everyone,” says Stewart. “So we need everyone to be part of the solution. Our speakers will highlight creative ways to combat misinformation in our daily lives.”