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Ahmer Arif and Angela D. R. Smith Collaborate on $5M NSF Grant on Misinformation

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Co-Designing for Trust,” a multi-institutional team working in Texas and Washington state to design community-centered solutions to mitigate the impacts of misinformation, has advanced to Phase 2 of the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program. A new, $5 million grant will allow academic and community researchers to scale up work they started last fall in Phase 1 through a series of community workshops.

"This project matters because designing solutions with communities doesn't just reduce misinformation, it also makes us better partners in the collective conversation we ought to have about social and technological change."

The Co-Designing for Trust team is made up of an interdisciplinary set of researchers and practitioners from The University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington, Seattle Central College and the Black Brilliance Research Project. They are working in partnership with Black-led organizations, rural librarians, educators, and students in order to address the disproportionate impact that misinformation — or false and misleading information —  has on Black and rural communities. To do so they are creating digital literacy resources and rethinking educational approaches aimed at helping individuals understand and respond to the ways that misinformation can exploit minds, emotions, and social circumstances.

"This project matters because designing solutions with communities doesn't just reduce misinformation, it also makes us better partners in the collective conversation we ought to have about social and technological change," says Ahmer Arif, an assistant professor at the School Information at the University of Texas at Austin. 

The project team will develop resources that center knowledge and existing assets of community partners. The aim is to ensure that these resources provide solutions that can be easily and usefully integrated into existing instructional approaches that help people navigate information in their everyday lives. By tailoring interventions to local social and emotional contexts, this project responds to the ways in which misinformation exploits our beliefs, emotions, and identities.

The input the research team received from the community workshops and engagement work during Phase One has directly shaped the Co-Designing for Trust team’s Phase Two vision, which centers on the development of a collaborative platform to support the creation of locally-tailored digital literacy materials. The team hopes that this platform will support communities — and especially those that are often excluded from the design of technology solutions — to create the resources they need to address the impacts of misinformation.

Other community partners continuing to work with the Co-Designing for Trust team in Phase 2 of the NSF-Convergence Accelerator project include libraries serving rural communities. As the Co-Designing for Trust team advances to its Phase 2 work, researchers and stakeholders, through community design sessions and other participatory activities, will continue to explore ways new and existing tools can be refined across various contexts. This will include community-based events and activities to help build stronger tools, resources, and relationships to tackle misinformation in their own contexts.

About the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator

Launched in 2019, the NSF Convergence Accelerator builds upon basic research and discovery to accelerate solutions toward societal impact. The program funds teams to solve societal challenges through convergence research and innovation. To enhance its impact, the Accelerator also places teams together in cohorts, synergizing their work through facilitated collaboration.

The Convergence Accelerator's unique program structure offers researchers and innovators the opportunity to accelerate their research toward tangible solutions that make a difference. Through an intense and hands-on journey, researchers gain skills and experiences that are applied during the program and throughout one's career.

Read the full project update on the UW website