Getting ”Dis”ed: Battling Misinformation and Disinformation on Social Media

Informatics in the Round

In this episode, we tackle an all-too-familiar topic: misinformation. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen how technology and social media can be used to both spread health information awareness and popularize misinformation. The question remains: in the age of technology, how can we be sure about the validity of the information we are receiving online, and how can we all be vigilant against the spread of misinformation?

To help us, we had the wonderful Evan Thornburg join us for today's podcast. Evan is a bioethicist and health equity officer for the City of Pennsylvania's Department of Public Health. In the past, they've also worked in the Philadelphia Mayor's Office as Deputy Director of LGBT. After completing a Master's of Arts in Urban Bioethics at Temple University's Lewis Katz School of Medicine and writing their thesis on the spread of misinformation, Evan took to TikTok, utilizing the platform to share their knowledge about bioethics, comment on current health news, and challenge the online community to be discerning about how they absorb and converse about health information. You can find Evan on TikTok at EVN the (Bio) Ethicist.

We loved talking with Evan, and we hope you come out of this episode with some practical tools to help you filter the information you see on social media!

Learn more about ethical research conduct from government websites such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the American Psychological Association.

Check out what the American Board of Internal Medicine has to say about the rise of misinformation:

-https://blog.abim.org/an-update-on-our-efforts-to-address-medical-misinformation/

-https://blog.abim.org/new-paper-recommends-creating-a-durably-funded-infrastructure-for-media-monitoring-and-effective-coordinated-responses-to-medical-misinformation/

Learn more about the work Desmond Upton Patton is doing with SAFELab here: https://www.asc.upenn.edu/research/centers/safe-lab

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