This post is part of a series of articles introducing members of the TITAN Consortium and their motivations for working on disinformation and AI research and innovation.
Who are you, where do you work, and what is your role on the TITAN project?
Marie Hoff from Danish Board of Technology better known as DBT, where I am the Project Manager of TITAN working closely together with Sissel Ladegaard.
Have you experienced disinformation yourself?
I have a big interest in migration challenges in Denmark and Europe. When it comes to news and information about immigration in Denmark, the information is likely to be presented in a way where facts are not completely accurate, where stories focus on negative aspects of immigration and where stories have a political agenda. It is not always directly disinformation, but almost never the whole truth. I am sure I have experienced other disinformation that I have not recognized as disinformation (unfortunately). Like many of the citizens in the co-creation process I don´t really share news online, therefore, I don´t assume I have spread any disinformation (I hope).
What trends do you see regarding disinformation and the move to mitigate/counter its
influence? (e.g., tools / services / markets / demographics)
Personally, I sometime talk with people I know about news I heard, which can be helpful to grasp if news contains disinformation. I will try to do this more in the future, to question and discuss news with people I know. I hope this can help me and maybe others to counter the influence of disinformation. I also think that more journalists in Denmark seems to be aware of the risk of disinformation and therefore have that in mind in their work.
What do you think is unique about TITAN's approach to countering disinformation?
That it (TITAN) wants the user to slow down and be more critical about what they read online. I think there is a more general “life learning” in slowing down, since we live in a very fast paced society. The experts in the co-creation process highlighted that it was quite unique that TITAN deals with enhancing the users competencies and not skills, which is more common in digital learning tools. I think that is worth highlighting on behalf of them.
What’s a fact about yourself that people might find surprising?
That all SoMe algorithms seems to believe that my only interest is funny dog videos!