Stemming the Tide of Problematic Information in Online Environments: Assessing Interventions and Identifying Opportunities for Interruption

Abstract

The spread of misinformation and the presence of ideological echo chambers online create problematic information environments that deprive users of accurate and unbiased information that they rely on. My research aims to understand the impacts and utility of interventions designed to mitigate problems of misinformation and echo chambers in online information environments as well as to develop future interventions. The first aspect of my research agenda is understanding the impact of previous interventions, which I explore through two studies-one evaluating the impacts of deplatforming as a misinformation moderation tool and the second assessing the current state of political factchecking. The next thrust of my work looks at identifying how current platform algorithms may be exacerbating problematic information environments, which I address through algorithmic audits of Twitter's Who to Follow and Home Timeline algorithms and their potential to influence users' encounters with election misinformation and political echo chambers. Finally, I propose research into future interventions and how we may measure their utility via a browser-extension based field experiment on content recommendation algorithms and network simulation experiments of deplatforming as a misinformation mitigation strategy.