Misinformation and Disinformation

Yan Jin. “Misinformation and Disinformation.” In Panel “Macrotrends in Crises: Emerging Factors Shaping the Future of Crisis Communication” (Chair: Timothy Coombs), the 7th International Crisis Communication Conference, October 5-7, 2023, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Abstract: Misinformation and disinformation are intertwined challenging and complex sticky crisis issues that will not go away. Artificial intelligence (AI) has introduced novel tools for content generation (e.g., ChatGPT), taking the world of business and human life by storm as we recently experience it. New digital technologies have triggered and/or amplified critical risk and crisis issues across organizational, health and disaster arenas worldwide, especially when used by content creators (individually or as a group) to create content with an intention to manipulate and deceive. Integrating crisis communication, psychology and computer science literature, several key areas of research for crisis scholars and practitioner to tackle together, including: (1) how to understand and prepare for countering the ability of malicious individuals/groups to disseminate and engage with a large volume of content through coordinated and automated systems; and (2) how organizations in private and public sectors can systematically expand their ability (activating both human and machine intelligence) to detect synthetic content and actor aimed for creating harm and build a more prepared and resilience crisis information system for managing future threats.