December 18, 2018

Thought Leader: Online media literacy, disinformation and privacy

Elizabeth Stoycheff

As a communication professor and quantitative social scientist, Elizabeth Stoycheff’s work examines how people consume online news, how people react to disinformation, and digital privacy in regard to the steps people may or may not take to secure their browsing behaviors and online identities. 

Stoycheff is the recent recipient of a grant from WhatsApp — the free messenger application that is owned by Facebook — to tackle misinformation and privacy. Specifically, Stoycheff’s team will interview Indonesian campaign officials about their strategies for using WhatsApp leading up to the 2019 national elections, followed by a face-to-face, nationally representative public opinion survey that assesses voters' interactions with fake and misleading information on the platform. It will investigate how to limit the spread of fake news given WhatsApp's commitment to user privacy, encryption and non-monitoring. 

Selected media clips:

View her complete faculty profile here.

Assets

Subscribe to Today@Wayne

Direct to your inbox twice a week