Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science, published a new white paper for the Knight Foundation "Contextual Fact-Checking: A New Approach to Correcting Misperceptions and Maintaining Trust." As Thorson explains in the introduction, "Over the past decade, public trust in media has declined precipitously. At the same time, enterprising organizations and individuals have realized that there is money to be made in deliberately spreading fabricated news stories and information. How can media outlets hope to maintain and even regain audience trust when in many circumstances, readers are right to be wary of much of the information they encounter? This white paper outlines some of the factors that shape individuals’ ability to understand and process news content, and explains how fragmented news stories can inadvertently engender audience mistrust and even create serious misperceptions."

Thorson also adapted the white paper for an op-ed in Medium "America the Clueless or America the Context-less?"

Her research has been covered and cited as a resource by multiple journalism publications including Neiman Lab , Poynter and Editor & Publisher.

04/26/18