Ullrich Ecker

@ulliecker.bsky.social

I study effects of misinformation. Professor at the School of Psychological Science and Fellow of the Public Policy Institute at the University of Western Australia Views my own.

Happy to see this out! There was a suggestion in the literature that susceptibility to continued influence of misinformation decreases with age; we suggest here that this was an artefact and age does not play a big role. Led by the excellent Paul McIlhiney. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

The Influence of Age on the Effectiveness of Misinformation Retractions

Misinformation has become a much-discussed issue in public and academic domains. One harmful aspect of misinformation is that it can persistently influence people's judgements after clear and credibl...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

🧵 New report just dropped 🚨 "Fractured Reality: How Democracy Can Win the Global Struggle Over the Information Space" — from the EU Joint Research Centre, led by Mario Scharfbillig and I. A landmark read for anyone working on disinformation, platforms & democracy. 👇 1/10

Bild

Why Misinformation Must Not Be Ignored Quite proud of this paper, which just received the journal's APA Editor's Choice award 😊 Big thanks to my coauthors Li Qian Tay, Jon Roozenbeek, @profsanderlinden.bsky.social, John Cook, @naomioreskes.bsky.social, and @lewan.bsky.social

APA Journals@apajournals.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Why #misinformation must not be ignored - A new, open access article by @ulliecker.bsky.social and colleagues, published in American Psychologist bit.ly/4pJ20fY

AI summaries kill search traffic. This has been an obvious consequence of Google's AI summary strategy since its inception. Apparently the training data is so valuable that Google is willing to risk the neck of the goose that lays golden eggs. Screenshot: thebullshitmachines.com/lesson-9-blu...

Screenshot from Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines (Bergstrom and West 2025).

People wandering through a desert mirage, with the text:

"We anticipate powerful, damaging spillover effects. If no one follows web links, there will be few incentives for people to create high-quality content in the first place.

Meanwhile large language models make it easy to produce low-quality content at the touch of a button. Quality human-created information may be swamped by AI-generated bullshit."
Jay Rosen@jayrosen.bsky.social · last yr.

Inside the digital publishing industry, which I try to monitor closely, this is the big news. By Julia Alexander at Puck.

Finally Mitch Dobbs on how correcting false claims can affect source credibility. Why do we see differences between politicians and doctors (corrections decrease trust in lying doctors but not politicians)? Possibly differences in initial trust. #sarmac2025 26/

The Impacts of Intent and Uncertainty on Source Credibility Following the Correction of Misinformation

Mitch Dobbs