Study finds that simple tags can make a difference.
Social media misinformation can negatively influence people’s attitudes about vaccine safety and effectiveness, but credible organizations — such as research universities and health institutions — can play a pivotal role in debunking myths with simple tags that link to factual information, UC Davis researchers suggest in a new study.
After two decades of volunteer work with cancer charities, Will Ellis (B.A., communication and Italian, ’04) wasn’t about to let the cascading crises of 2020 derail him. Despite pandemic restrictions on in-person events, Ellis raised more than $103,000 in 10 weeks for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) Greater Bay Area Chapter to win its “Man of the Year” title.
With California Sen. Kamala Harris out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, UC Davis communication professor Magdalena Wojcieszak and colleagues investigated who her supporters are likely to vote for.
Despite the ongoing threat of misinformation spreading online, UC Davis cognitive scientist Seth Frey still believes in the promise of the internet as a force for political and economic empowerment. The National Science Foundation recently awarded Frey and colleagues at three other universities a $460,000 grant to study how groups create and enforce self-rule in a wide array of domains, including Frey’s focus: Reddit forums (called subreddits) and video games.
Social media are a powerful tool to spread information — and misinformation — about health issues such as vaccines and cancer prevention. How does bad information spread online, and what is the best way to stop it? That is a topic being studied by Assistant Professor Jingwen Zhang and her students in the UC Davis Department of Communication.
Like a disease detective, Jade (Jieyu) Ding Featherstone is on the hunt for a rising global threat to public health. But her territory is Twitter and her target is vaccine misinformation.
For her doctoral research in the Department of Communication, Featherstone is tracking anti-vaccination tweets. Among questions she is exploring: Are there central players behind them? If so, are they bots or humans? Who retweets anti-vaxx messages? What works best in countering their false claims?
When it comes to cancer prevention messaging, clear information from trusted organizations has greater reach on social media than personal accounts of patients, new UC Davis research suggests.
Children’s television programming often contains moral lessons and examples of inclusiveness, but children may struggle to comprehend and transfer the situations presented on an animated production to their own lives, University of California, Davis, research suggests.
Negative media portrayals of Muslim Americans can have adverse effects on how they view themselves as citizens and their trust in the U.S. government. In fact, these effects may be stronger than the impact caused by personal discrimination, according to a new study co-authored by Magdalena Wojcieszak, a UC Davis associate professor of communication who researches the effects of media on tolerance, perceptions and polarization.
