The spread of misinformation, particularly as it relates to science and technology in the present day, is a concerning issue. I have had many conversations with friends and colleagues who are both researchers and educators about our role in combating the spread of misinformation. The general consensus among us is that we have a responsibility to provide scientific, technological, and educational information to the public in some form. Do we have the power to eliminate misinformation entirely? No. Will we convince people that misinformation is wrong? Maybe not. However, we do have an opportunity to create content based on research and evidence that is more consumable for the general public and share that content to our social media platforms.
So that being said, how do we create this content? Here are three concrete examples of content created by researchers or educators that may be helpful if you want to do more to spread evidence-based information.
- Create a public Twitter account and use it to share your research. There are so many science, technology, and education communities on Twitter. Get involved with these communities, share your own ideas and then re-Tweet others’ ideas as well. This is a great way to share small bite-sized sections of your research in a broader community.
- Write your own blog or volunteer to write a blog post for a science or education communication platform. This is a great option if you have a lot to say on a topic and want to take the opportunity to write for the general public rather than an academic peer-reviewed publication. If you do this, consider sharing the link to your blog on your various social media accounts to get more people to read your content.
- Create infographics to be shared on social media. This is one that can be so helpful in the spreading of quality information, and it can often be shared easily across the many social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.). I know when I scroll through my feeds, I’m most inclined to stop and take a quick look at a well-designed infographic that catches my eye.
Reminder: In any content you share or create, remember to credit original sources appropriately! Use your academic integrity in all platforms and don’t plagiarize. Best practices are to provide the reader with an easy way to access the original source. This is often as straight-forward as linking to or tagging the original source when creating social media content.
The alternative to this is to take a more direct approach and comment on misinformation to try to change minds. Unfortunately, there is little evidence to support that this approach is effective in convincing people that misinformation is wrong. I argue that the better approach is for those of us who have the time, talents, and gumption to be bold and create quality research-based information that can be shared to social media. Who knows, maybe our content will go viral and overwhelm some of the more rampant misinformation that is currently available.