Misinformation Mitigation Praxis: Lessons Learned and Future Directions from Co·Insights

Misinformation is a global challenge, but successful mitigations must come from the communities affected and not be imposed by external entities. Co·Insights is a multi-year NSF-funded initiative building capacity to respond to misinformation and harmful narratives in Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, based on a deep involvement with grassroots organizations and a co-construction of tools grounded on community needs. Co·Insights' unique cross-sectoral, cross-disciplinary collaboration is a convergence of information retrieval, computational social science, and ethnographic inquiry with a unique platform that enables community organizations, fact-checkers, and academics to work together to respond effectively to harmful content targeting communities. In this SIRIP talk designed for a technical audience, we will share lessons learned from the first 2.5 years of Co·Insights, and how we are bridging the academic - praxis divide by integrating state-of-the-art research developments into large-scale deployed systems. Topics covered will include: the challenges and joys of collaborating across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries; community-driven approaches that utilize information retrieval techniques such as claim matching in concert with emerging best practices in misinformation mitigation; open problems we have encountered in the space; and future directions we find promising. Co·Insights is led by Meedan, a global non-profit providing award-winning software solutions to mitigate misinformation; and in partnership with AAPI community organizations and several academic institutions.