Analysis and Response for Trust Tool (ARTT): Expert-Informed Resources for Individuals and Online Communities to Address Vaccine Hesitancy and Misinformation

Hacks/Hackers, Arlington VA

Investigators

Abstract

The project will develop an expert-informed product: a software tool that helps individuals and community moderators to analyze information quality, including misinformation, and to better respond to community situations by presenting practical interventions that build trust. While many aspects of these resources and tools will be relevant no matter the topic, we will focus on the topic of vaccine hesitancy to ensure our effort’s applicability. Though designed to have immediate impact on community exchanges regarding vaccine safety, the project will produce outputs and knowledge that will be transferable to multiple information domains.  The achievement of two intermediate goals will inform the product. First, we will develop easy-to-understand taxonomies and datasets that encapsulate the expert analysis of credible information. Second, we will identify legitimate and effective trust-building interventions for mediation, including correction, into a catalog of response possibilities. Using the outputs, we aim to develop a software tool that provides resources to local actors in analyzing and responding to misinformation and trustworthy information.   This is a fundamentally interdisciplinary effort, bringing together research fields such as computer science, social science, media literacy, conflict resolution, and psychology in addition to practitioners from communities focusing on health-related communications in journalism, vaccine safety (pharmacovigiliance), and Wikipedia.