Misinformation: User-Centered Interventions for Private Individuals and Authorities

Abstract: Informed navigation of the complex digital information realm constitutes a major challenge for society and individuals, which is constantly growing due to the overabundance of reliable and false information. In particular, this includes dealing with misinformation on social media, a central source of information procurement and exchange, in everyday life and in times of crisis. Complementing efforts like educational measures in classrooms or critical journalism, HCI suggests digital misinformation interventions as a user-centered countermeasure that facilitate social media users’ and authorities’ informed navigation, encompassing multiple modalities, such as text, audio, and video. The talk presents a taxonomy of the state-of-the-art of misinformation interventions and highlights trends toward transparent and comprehensible interventions in contrast to top-down approaches. It presents exemplary interventions for teenagers on TikTok and a dashboard for public authorities during crises.

Bio: Katrin Hartwig is a research associate and post-doctoral researcher at the Chair of Science and Technology for Peace and Security (PEASEC) in the Department of Computer Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Her research interests focus on the intersection of computer science and psychology, particularly in disinformation, social media, and usable security. In 2024, she completed her doctorate (Dr.-Ing.) at PEASEC on the topic of "Navigating Misinformation: User-Centered Design and Evaluation of Indicator-Based Digital Interventions". Katrin studied computer science (M.Sc.) and psychology in IT (B.Sc.) at the Technical University of Darmstadt.