Kate Starbird
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View article: Deep Storytelling: Collective Sensemaking and Layers of Meaning in U.S. Elections
Deep Storytelling: Collective Sensemaking and Layers of Meaning in U.S. Elections Open
Misinformation and disinformation about elections remain pressing concerns for researchers, policymakers, and the public. Critics, however, argue that fears surrounding these issues are exaggerated due to a lack of evidence of impact. This…
View article: What is going on? An evidence-frame framework for analyzing online rumors about election integrity
What is going on? An evidence-frame framework for analyzing online rumors about election integrity Open
Pervasive falsehoods that erode trust in election processes are of increasing concern to democracies around the world. Misleading claims like these are often understood as simply ''getting the facts wrong''. Using a grounded, interpretativ…
View article: Data Visualizations as Propaganda: Tracing Lineages, Provenance, and Political Framings in Online Anti-Immigrant Discourse
Data Visualizations as Propaganda: Tracing Lineages, Provenance, and Political Framings in Online Anti-Immigrant Discourse Open
Along with other visual content, data visualizations are increasingly used within online discourse, including political communication. Though often considered to be ''objective'', data visualizations can also be created and/or appropriated…
View article: Legislating Uncertainty: Election Policies and the Amplification of Misinformation
Legislating Uncertainty: Election Policies and the Amplification of Misinformation Open
Can state election policies affect the spread of misinformation? This paper studies the role played by ballot processing policies, which determine when ballots can be examined and organized, in the online spread of political misinformation…
View article: 'I Blow Up': Understanding TikTok Users' Reactions to Sudden Social Media Attention
'I Blow Up': Understanding TikTok Users' Reactions to Sudden Social Media Attention Open
Social media platforms are known to facilitate sudden bursts of attention on individual pieces of content and their creators — dynamics often referred to as ''going viral''. However, questions remain about how these moments impact the indi…
View article: Privacy versus Transparency: Navigating Public Records Requests and Adversarial Dynamics in a Distributed Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration
Privacy versus Transparency: Navigating Public Records Requests and Adversarial Dynamics in a Distributed Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration Open
Public records laws are standard for state and federal governments across the U.S. Such laws rest on the core notion that transparency, enacted through access to governmental documentation, will ensure accountability and minimize governmen…
View article: The End of Trust and Safety?: Examining the Future of Content Moderation and Upheavals in Professional Online Safety Efforts
The End of Trust and Safety?: Examining the Future of Content Moderation and Upheavals in Professional Online Safety Efforts Open
View article: ElectionRumors2022: A Dataset of Election Rumors on Twitter During the 2022 U.S. Midterms
ElectionRumors2022: A Dataset of Election Rumors on Twitter During the 2022 U.S. Midterms Open
Understanding the spread of online rumors is a pressing societal challenge and an active area of research across domains. In the context of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, one influential social media platform for sharing information — in…
View article: Ensemble-Based Uncertainty Quantification for Reliable Large Language Model Classification in Social Data Applications
Ensemble-Based Uncertainty Quantification for Reliable Large Language Model Classification in Social Data Applications Open
Assessing classification confidence is essential for effectively leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) in automated data labeling, particularly within the sensitive contexts of Computational Social Science (CSS) tasks. In this study, we …
View article: LLM Confidence Evaluation Measures in Zero-Shot CSS Classification
LLM Confidence Evaluation Measures in Zero-Shot CSS Classification Open
Assessing classification confidence is critical for leveraging large language models (LLMs) in automated labeling tasks, especially in the sensitive domains presented by Computational Social Science (CSS) tasks. In this paper, we make thre…
View article: Misleading Ourselves: How Disinformation Manipulates Sensemaking
Misleading Ourselves: How Disinformation Manipulates Sensemaking Open
Informal sensemaking surrounding U.S. election processes has been fraught in recent years, due to the inherent uncertainty of elections, the complexity of election processes in the U.S., and to disinformation. Based on insights from qualit…
View article: LLM Chain Ensembles for Scalable and Accurate Data Annotation
LLM Chain Ensembles for Scalable and Accurate Data Annotation Open
The ability of large language models (LLMs) to perform zero-shot classification makes them viable solutions for data annotation in rapidly evolving domains where quality labeled data is often scarce and costly to obtain. However, the large…
View article: LLM Confidence Evaluation Measures in Zero-Shot CSS Classification
LLM Confidence Evaluation Measures in Zero-Shot CSS Classification Open
Assessing classification confidence is critical for leveraging large language models (LLMs) in automated labeling tasks, especially in the sensitive domains presented by Computational Social Science (CSS) tasks. In this paper, we make thre…
View article: Governance Capture in a Self-Governing Community: A Qualitative Comparison of the Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias
Governance Capture in a Self-Governing Community: A Qualitative Comparison of the Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias Open
What types of governance arrangements make some self-governed online groups more vulnerable to disinformation campaigns? We present a qualitative comparative analysis of the Croatian and Serbian Wikipedia editions to answer this question. …
View article: Viral Privacy: Contextual Integrity as a Lens to Understand Content Creators' Privacy Perceptions and Needs After Sudden Attention
Viral Privacy: Contextual Integrity as a Lens to Understand Content Creators' Privacy Perceptions and Needs After Sudden Attention Open
When designing multi-stakeholder privacy systems, it is important to consider how different groups of social media users have different goals and requirements for privacy. Additionally, we must acknowledge that it is important to keep in m…
View article: Towards Incorporating Researcher Safety into Information Integrity Research Ethics
Towards Incorporating Researcher Safety into Information Integrity Research Ethics Open
Traditional research ethics has mainly and rightly been focused on making sure that participants are treated safely, justly, and ethically, to avoid the violation of their rights or putting participants in harm's way. Information integrity…
View article: Governance Capture in a Self-Governing Community: A Qualitative Comparison of the Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias
Governance Capture in a Self-Governing Community: A Qualitative Comparison of the Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias Open
What types of governance arrangements makes some self-governed online groups more vulnerable to disinformation campaigns? To answer this question, we present a qualitative comparative analysis of the Croatian and Serbian Wikipedia editions…
View article: Post-Spotlight Posts: The Impact of Sudden Social Media Attention on Account Behavior
Post-Spotlight Posts: The Impact of Sudden Social Media Attention on Account Behavior Open
Within social media communities, sudden attention is a frequent phenomenon where a particular user receives a rapid onset of heightened engagement. Using a statistical analysis, we examine the impacts that this outsized attention has on th…
View article: To Reply or to Quote: Comparing Conversational Framing Strategies on Twitter
To Reply or to Quote: Comparing Conversational Framing Strategies on Twitter Open
Social media platform affordances allow users to interact with content and with each other in diverse ways. For example, on Twitter, 1 users can like, reply, retweet, or quote another tweet. Though it’s clear that these different features …
View article: Selective and deceptive citation in the construction of dueling consensuses
Selective and deceptive citation in the construction of dueling consensuses Open
The COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to study science communication and, in particular, the transmission of consensus. In this study, we show how “science communicators,” writ large to include both mainstream science journal…
View article: Participatory Design and Power in Misinformation, Disinformation, and Online Hate Research
Participatory Design and Power in Misinformation, Disinformation, and Online Hate Research Open
As a research tradition, participatory design (PD) tends to focus on power dynamics where researchers hold greater power than participants. This paper uses design fiction to consider what this tendency overlooks by examining settings where…
View article: Followback Clusters, Satellite Audiences, and Bridge Nodes: Coengagement Networks for the 2020 US Election
Followback Clusters, Satellite Audiences, and Bridge Nodes: Coengagement Networks for the 2020 US Election Open
The 2020 United States (US) presidential election was — and has continued to be — the focus of pervasive and persistent mis- and disinformation spreading through our media ecosystems, including social media. This event has driven the colle…
View article: Mobilizing Manufactured Reality: How Participatory Disinformation Shaped Deep Stories to Catalyze Action during the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election
Mobilizing Manufactured Reality: How Participatory Disinformation Shaped Deep Stories to Catalyze Action during the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election Open
Claims of election fraud throughout the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election and during the lead up to the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt have drawn attention to the urgent need to better understand how people interpret and act on disinfo…
View article: Tweet Trajectory and AMPS-based Contextual Cues can Help Users Identify Misinformation
Tweet Trajectory and AMPS-based Contextual Cues can Help Users Identify Misinformation Open
Well-intentioned users sometimes enable the spread of misinformation due to limited context about where the information originated and/or why it is spreading. Building upon recommendations based on prior research about tackling misinformat…
View article: Rumors Have Rules
Rumors Have Rules Open
Decades-old research about how and why people share rumors is even more relevant in a world with social media.
View article: Influence and Improvisation: Participatory Disinformation during the 2020 US Election
Influence and Improvisation: Participatory Disinformation during the 2020 US Election Open
The 2020 US election was accompanied by an effort to spread a false meta-narrative of widespread voter fraud. This meta-narrative took hold among a substantial portion of the US population, undermining trust in election procedures and resu…
View article: Followback Clusters, Satellite Audiences, and Bridge Nodes: Coengagement Networks for the 2020 US Election
Followback Clusters, Satellite Audiences, and Bridge Nodes: Coengagement Networks for the 2020 US Election Open
The 2020 United States presidential election was, and has continued to be, the focus of pervasive and persistent mis- and disinformation spreading through our media ecosystems, including social media. This event has driven the collection a…
View article: Searching for signal and borrowing wi-fi: Understanding disaster-related adaptations to telecommunications disruptions through social media
Searching for signal and borrowing wi-fi: Understanding disaster-related adaptations to telecommunications disruptions through social media Open
Disaster events can expose the vulnerability of telecommunications infrastructure to service disruptions. During these traumatic events, when connectivity is most needed, it sometimes takes days, or even weeks or months, for normal service…
View article: Demographics of an International Influence Operation Affecting Facebook Users in the United States
Demographics of an International Influence Operation Affecting Facebook Users in the United States Open
It has been difficult to address the impact and targeting of online foreign influence operations, because researchers rarely have insight into the demographic characteristics of users who interact with content on large social media platfor…
View article: Auditing Google's Search Headlines as a Potential Gateway to Misleading Content
Auditing Google's Search Headlines as a Potential Gateway to Misleading Content Open
The prevalence and spread of online misinformation during the 2020 US presidential election served to perpetuate a false belief in widespread election fraud. Though much research has focused on how social media platforms connected people t…