Google to roll out anti-disinformation campaign in some EU countries (updated)
24/08/2022 20:31
(Adds other platforms to feature ad clips)
By Supantha Mukherjee
STOCKHOLM, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Google's GOOGL.O Jigsaw
subsidiary will launch a campaign next week to tackle
disinformation in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic about
Ukrainian refugees based on research by psychologists at two
British universities.
Working with Jigsaw, the psychologists from the universities
of Cambridge and Bristol have produced 90-second clips designed
to "inoculate" people against harmful content on social media.
The clips, which will run in advertising slots on Google's
YouTube and also on other platforms such as Twitter TWTR.N ,
TikTok and Meta's META.O Facebook, aim to help people identify
emotional manipulation and scapegoating in a news headline.
"If you tell people what's true and false, a lot of people
will dispute ... but what you can predict are the techniques
that will be used in spreading misinformation, like with the
Ukrainian crisis," Jon Roozenbeek, lead author of a report on
the research behind the campaign, said in an interview.
The research was spread over seven experiments, including
with a group of Americans over 18 years old who watch political
news on YouTube. Jigsaw exposed around 5.4 million U.S.
YouTubers to an inoculation video, with almost a million
watching for at least 30 seconds.
The campaign is designed to build resilience to anti-refugee
narratives, in partnership with local non-government
organisations, fact checkers, academics, and disinformation
experts.
The spread of misleading and fake information in the United
States and Europe through social media networks has led to
various governments pushing for new laws to stem disinformation
campaigns. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL8N2Y334J
"We are thinking of this as a pilot experiment, so there's
absolutely no reason that this approach couldn't be scaled to
other countries," Beth Goldberg, head of research at Jigsaw,
said in an interview.
"Poland was chosen because it has the most Ukrainian
refugees," she said, adding the Czech Republic and Slovakia
would be useful bellwethers for the rest of Europe.
The campaign will run for one month.
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm; Editing by Mark
Potter and Josie Kao)
((supantha.mukherjee@thomsonreuters.com; +46 70 721 1004;
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