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Mike Horning speaks on growing trend of misinformation during COVID-19 pandemic

August 25, 2021

Mike Horning

Mike Horning (School of Communication) was interviewed by WFXR (Roanoke, VA) on July, 30th, 2021 regarding the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and the delta variant. During the interview Dr. Horning discussed the role of social media in spreading misinformation, offering tips for media consumption. “The first thing I think you should do, at any time you’re getting information on social media, you should always approach it with a little bit of skepticism,” said Dr. Horning. “You should make sure you check those facts with reliable sources.” 

His research examines how communication technologies impact social attitudes and behaviors, with a current focus on the impact of “fake news” and misinformation on our democratic processes. Dr. Horning’s work in this area has been supported through a grant from the National Science Foundation and his most recent research will be published in this year’s annual Computer Supported Cooperative Work Conference (CSCW). 

For more information about his research please see the following publications:

Bhuiyan, M. M., Zhang, K., Vick, K., Horning, M. A., & Mitra, T. (2018, October). FeedReflect: A Tool for Nudging Users to Assess News Credibility on Twitter. In Companion of the 2018 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 205-208).

Yang, F., & Horning, M. (2020). Reluctant to Share: How Third Person Perceptions of Fake News Discourage News Readers From Sharing “Real News” on Social Media. Social Media+ Society, 6(3), 2056305120955173.