Claire Wardle
@cward1e.bsky.social
Associate Professor, Dept of Communication, Cornell University. Bit partial to information ecosystems.
When people seek guidance from science, they expect it to work more than once. I have TWO new articles on commercial forces & proprietary models that make science less reliable, with pointers to communities and ideas that might help. This post offers a summary: citizensandtech.org/2026/07/comm...
New Studies: How Commercial Forces Make Science Less Reliable
Computational social science has been distorted by commercial forces, and AI is making it worse.
citizensandtech.org
Excellent post by @fullfact.org in @niemanlab.org about what they're learning about AI-generated disinformation and how they're using their in-house tools to identify and respond www.niemanlab.org/2026/06/full...
Full Fact is battling AI-generated elections content with AI tools of its own
AI imagery is no longer a hypothetical factor, but at the same time, we've been able to use AI in new ways ourselves to confront the challenge.
niemanlab.org
NEW on @indicator.media: I found a group of X accounts that worked together to remove Community Notes from British Conservative Party accounts during the 2024 UK general election.
Inside a pro-Conservative influence operation on Community Notes
Inside a pro-Conservative group effort to influence X's Community Notes
indicator.media
It's a good Monday morning when your student's personal take on the Nepal election gets published. She argues Discord's trust and safety team probably don't understand how it was used by young voters over the past year in the lead up to the election. www.techpolicy.press/nepals-gen-z...
Nepal's Gen Z Used TikTok and Discord to Win a Historic Election
The election of rapper-turned politician Balen Shah was shaped by platforms and algorithms built on the other side of the world, writes Aaradhyaa Gyawali.
techpolicy.press
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.
Bellingcat@bellingcat.com · 6mo agoBellingcat founder @eliothiggins.bsky.social and Cornell University’s @cward1e.bsky.social unpack how disinformation evolved, why trust in institutions is collapsing, and what tools we all need to stay sharp in a world of misinformation. Listen back to last week's Stage Talk: rss.com/podcasts/bel...
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.
Pelajanela@whois.mediapolicy.eu · 6mo agoOn January 29th (Thu) @eliothiggins.bsky.social & @cward1e.bsky.social will discuss where the 15 years of evolution of the counter-disinformation efforts from 2011 to its subsequent expansion across governments, platforms, and civil society, and the backlash that followed, leaves us all today.
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...
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...
Welcome to Sensemaking Distortion
A blog about how our ability make sense of everything is profoundly distorted by digital and social media.
open.substack.com
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.
Center for an Informed Public@cip.uw.edu · 8mo agoWe're currently seeking nomination materials for the @cip.uw.edu Award for Impact & Excellence. The submission deadline is January 15, 2026. Complete information: www.cip.uw.edu/cip-award-im...
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!
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
indicator.media
We have to (have to!) break this "chat shit for money" version of the internet.
Alexios Mantzarlis@mantzarlis.com · 10mo agoNEW on @indicator.media: I found 101 accounts impersonating Telemundo, Televisa, CNN and other media outlets spreading clickbaity falsehoods to millions on TikTok. The company took them all down after I reached out.
Not surprising, but still very important to document.
Jay Van Bavel, PhD@jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 11mo agoExtreme views are heavily over-represented on social media Social platforms’ tendency to reward hostile content creates incentives that systematically reward simplistic messages and extreme positions and this fuels populism www.ft.com/content/9251... via @jburnmurdoch.ft.com
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
Jen@ladyjenpool.bsky.social · 12mo agoHey, as a librarian I need to tell you: Our funding depends on usage. So go ahead and check out that book even if you don't think you'll finish it. No one will know. Check out that DVD even though you might not like it. Get ambitious in your quest for knowledge.
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...
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.
techcrunch.com
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...
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.
fullfact.org
🚨 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.
Nature Human Behaviour@nathumbehav.nature.com · last yr.Contemporary information systems face growing public distrust across a range of issues. This Perspective introduces a Community-Centered Exploration, Engagement, and Evaluation system to help detect and mitigate potential information harms.
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)
“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.”
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.
abc15.com
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)
OK I wrote about the database www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...
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?
nbcnews.com
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.
Whitney Phillips@whitneyphillips.bsky.social · last yr.Today my new @mitpress.bsky.social book with Mark Brockway publishes! It explores the historical forces that gave rise to a shapeshifting, amalgamated figure of the liberal devil mapped onto a very broad conceptualization of “the left” and the Democratic Party mitpress.mit.edu/978026255227...
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...
The Information Animal with Alicia Wanless
YouTube video by #DogShirtTV
youtube.com
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.
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.
buff.ly
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. 🛟
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…
linkedin.com
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.
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
freedom.press
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...
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?
slate.com
