#Webimmunization. How can online social networks create collective resilience against misinformation?

The #Webimmunization research project is a three-year project that has received funding from the EEA Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 through the National Science Center call IdeaLab (project number: 2019/35/J/HS6/03498). The project is carried out by a research team composed of researchers from the Jagiellonian University - Medical College, Poznan University of Technology, the Maj Institute of Pharmacology - Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Oslo.

The project's main research question is: what can make online users immune against the spread of misinformation? We call this hypothetical resilience to online misinformation “webimmunity”. To answer this question, the project combines perspectives from epidemiology, psychology, philosophy and computer science.

Its main goal is to develop tools that can reliably assess the immunity of individual actors and entire networks of online users against misinformation. Moreover, it aims to test how this webimmunitization influences behavior online and ultimately how it can be increased. Importantly, the project also has a clear focus on ethical dilemmas related to the concept of webimmunization.

The #Webimmunization project aims at providing novel empirical insights into the mechanisms and processes leading to and resulting from webimmunity, including its ethical challenges. This knowledge is expected to inspire critical future research and to help address some of the most pressing societal issues of our time.

More information can be found on the project’ website #Webimmunization