Business & Management Research Centre, and AAAI: Elina Hwang
Hyeunjung (Elina) Hwang
Associate Professor of Information Systems
Foster School of Business, University of Washington in Seattle
Killing not just weeds: Unexpected consequences of combating misinformation
Date: Friday, September 12, 2025
Time: 10:30 am - 12:00 pm EDT
Location: Bronfman Building, Room B046
All are cordially invited to attend.
About:
Social platforms employ interventions to combat the rapid spread of misinformation. This study focuses on one such intervention employed by X* that aims to suppress misinformation by helping users find accurate information. In particular, this study seeks to provide a holistic view of the intervention’s effectiveness by investigating its impact on both true and false information diffusion. To this end, we utilize dual process theory to understand the potential effect and leverage the quasi-experiment setting and estimate the effect. Our results reveal that the intervention suppresses not only the spread of false news but also true information. To understand this unexpected finding, we further collect data using Amazon Mechanical Turk and find that true information is suppressed because people have difficulty discerning its truthfulness. We provide insights into the tweet characteristics that tend to mislead people’s perceptions.
