Digital Wildfire: (Mis)information flows, propagation and responsible governance

Twitter等社交媒体平台的快速发展对人们与他人即时联系和沟通的方式产生了重大影响。用户放在社交媒体平台上的内容可以在几分钟内“病毒式传播”，这些内容，无论是文字、图片还是指向其他网站的链接，都可以对事件的发展产生深远的影响。这可能是好事，也可能是坏事。在灾难发生的时候，发布有关事件的推特可以呼吁来自世界各地的人们提供帮助。但人们也可以通过社交媒体传播可疑和危险的信息、仇恨言论和谣言。这种行为被称为“数字野火”。世界经济论坛的一份报告指出，数字野火在两种情况下最危险：在高度紧张的情况下，虚假信息或不准确呈现的图像可能在可能纠正之前造成损害。在现实世界中，这相当于在一个拥挤的剧院里大喊“着火了！”——即使意识到没有着火的消息需要一段时间才能传开，但在这段时间里，人们可能已经在争抢出口的过程中被压死了。另一种危险的情况是，当广泛传播的信息导致“群体思维”时，人们可能会抵制纠正它的尝试。这些数字野火可能严重挑战传统媒体、民间社会和政府准确报道和应对事件的能力。但人们如何在这些数字社交空间中交流还没有得到很好的理解；用户可能不完全理解这些空间作为沟通渠道是如何“工作”的，因此什么是适当和负责任的行为可能不清楚。接下来的挑战是制定适当的方法来管理这些空间，以及如何负责任地应用和使用它们。本项目将通过将研究纳入名为“信息通信技术负责任创新”的工作方案，并通过制定研究和推进社会媒体负责任治理的方法，试图应对这一挑战。一个关键的问题是，这些空间中的人们在多大程度上“自我调节”自己的行为？如果这是明显的，那么就有理由探索如何扩大自我纠正机制，以便更快地识别虚假谣言。如果新的治理机制尊重并建立在现有的自我治理技术的基础上，其合法性可能会得到增强。利用一系列方法，我们将研究如何使用社交媒体，人们如何消费他们在那里找到的信息，以及他们在生产中扮演什么角色；（错误的）信息在实时传播时是如何流动的。我们将从我们最近和正在进行的社交媒体研究中挑选出一些谣言和仇恨言论的案例研究。从分析中，我们将制作一个数字工具来检测和可视化谣言，错误信息和敌对内容，以及它们与自我监管行为（如反言论，消除谣言和验证实践）的关系，以便人们能够就如何管理应对现实世界事件的新情况做出更明智的决定。我们还将在不同的地点（警察、社交媒体平台、b谷歌、民权组织、新闻媒体）进行实地调查，以调查利益相关者如何应对通过社交媒体可能引起错误信息、谣言和敌对内容的事件所带来的挑战，例如，在体育赛事、内乱和选举活动期间。根据我们的分析，该项目将为管理社交媒体使用的实践制定一份道德安全地图。我们将通过一系列产出来补充这张道德安全地图，以产生更广泛的影响，例如，与中学合作，我们将为年轻人开发一个关于数字野火的反思和培训模块——年轻人是积极使用社交媒体的最大年龄组之一，也是相对脆弱的社会群体。

The rapid growth of social media platforms such as Twitter has had a significant impact on the way people can connect and communicate instantaneously with others. The content that users put onto social media platforms can 'go viral' in minutes and that content, whether text, images or links to other sites, can have profound effects on events as they unfold. This can be both for the good or the bad. In times of disaster, tweeting about events can call people to help from around the globe. But people can also spread dubious and dangerous information, hate speech and rumours, via social media. This type of behaviour has been called "digital wildfires". A World Economic Forum report indicates two situations in which digital wildfires are most dangerous: in situations of high tension, when false information or inaccurately presented imagery can cause damage before it is possible to correct it. The real-world equivalent is shouting "fire!" in a crowded theatre - even if it takes a moment for realisation to spread that there is no fire, in that time people may already have been crushed to death in the scramble for the exit. Another dangerous situation is when widely circulated information leads to 'groupthink' which may be resistant to attempts to correct it. These digital wildfires can seriously challenge the capacity of traditional media, civil society and government to report accurately and respond to events as they unfold. But how people communicate in these digital social spaces is not well understood; users may not fully understand how these spaces 'work' as channels of communication and so what constitutes appropriate and responsible behaviour may be unclear. The challenge then is to develop appropriate ways of governing these spaces and how to apply and use them responsibly. This project will attempt to address this challenge by framing the study in a programme of work known as Responsible Innovation in ICT and by developing a methodology for the study and advancement of the responsible governance of social media. A key question is to what extent do people in these spaces 'self-regulate' their behaviour? If this is evident then there is a case for exploring how self-correction mechanisms may be amplified so that false rumours are identified more quickly. The legitimacy of new governance mechanisms may be enhanced if they respect and build on such existing self-governance techniques. Drawing on a range of methods we will examine how social media are used, how people consume information they find there and what roles they play in its production; how (mis)information flows as they spread in real-time. We will draw on a selection of case studies of rumour and hate speech sourced from our recent and on-going research in social media. From the analyses we will produce a digital tool to detect and visualise rumour, misinformation and antagonistic content and how this relates to self-regulative behaviour such as counter speech, dispelling of rumours and verification practices, so that people are able to make better-informed decisions on how to manage emerging situations in response to real-world events. We will also conduct fieldwork at various sites (police, social media platforms, Google, civil rights organisations, news media) to investigate how stakeholders respond to challenges presented by events where misinformation, rumour and antagonistic content via social media may be a concern, for example, during sporting events, civil disturbance and electoral campaigns. From our analyses the project will develop an ethical security map for the practices of governing the use of social media. We will complement this ethical security map with a range of outputs for broader impact such as, engaging with secondary schools, where we will develop a reflection and training module on digital wildfire for young people - one of the largest age groups actively using social media and also a relatively vulnerable social group.