Emma Spiro (left) and Kate Starbird (right) By Greg MillerWhen five researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle, launched the new Center for an Informed Public back in December 2019, they had no idea what was coming.
The center aims to study how misinformation propagates and use the findings to “promote an informed society, and strengthen democratic discourse.” Now, just a few months later, the coronavirus pandemic is generating a tidal wave of information—some of it accurate, some not so much—that has saturated social and traditional media.Two of the center’s founders—sociologist Emma Spiro and crisis informatics researcher Kate Starbird—are watching closely.