As internet usage becomes an integral part of our daily lives, many people rely on various online sources for information. While the internet offers greater convenience and a wider range of news sources, the spread of false .
As internet usage becomes an integral part of our daily lives, many people rely on various online sources for information. While the internet offers greater convenience and a wider range of news sources, the spread of false information has become one of the biggest challenges of this century, exacerbated by the rise of generative artificial intelligence. The spread of false information—whether in the form of mis-, dis- and mal-information (MDM)—can lead individuals and organizations to make harmful decisions, and has been shown to create societal divisions on critical and contentious issues.
A research team, including members from various faculties, including Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS Business School, School of Computing, College of Design and Engineering, Faculty of Law, and Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, is addressing the issue of false information head-on through a program known as Information Gyroscope (iGyro).
This is a comprehensive five-year research initiative that seeks to identify and address vulnerabilities in the digital information pipeline, develop strategies to enhance digital resilience among online users, and promote behaviors that encourage engagement with trustworthy information. Led by Professor Chen Tsuhan, the interdisciplinary team of 40 researchers is committed to understanding and shaping the evolving digital information landscape.
“In aviation, a gyroscope provides stability and orientation guidance to maintain accurate control of an aircraft. Similarly, iGyro showcases our team’s efforts to maintain stability in the face of a changing and chaotic information landscape. It also symbolizes the interdisciplinary nature of the team, with expertise spanning disciplines such as social science, computer science, engineering, and law”, said Prof Chen.
Adopting a holistic three-layered framework, the iGyro team places understanding and shaping human behavior at the core of their research. The next layer of their framework is the technology domain, which aims to understand the different stages of the digital information pipeline, from creation to dissemination to consumption. Finally, the outermost layer of their framework studies the potential impact of mitigation strategies as well as the roles of regulations and policies used to deploy these strategies.
The iGyro team published a journal article in Digital Government: Research and Practice explaining how the iGyro team has applied the three-layered framework to examine the lifecycle of content created by generative artificial intelligence, from creation to consumption.
