Patient, person, people: developing a public health perspective on online disinformation and psychological manipulation

Online 4th–6th December 2024


Description

Science denialism, misinformation, disinformation, fake news, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, trolling, scams, cults, propaganda, and extremism are phenomena that share common elements: they exploit individuals’ vulnerabilities, operate through psychological manipulation, and erode trust in society by creating epistemic divergence (i.e., systems of knowledge, beliefs, and values that make access to a shared truth increasingly difficult), which in the extreme can lead to antisocial or even criminal behavior. In our increasingly complex world, these phenomena have the potential to undermine not just individuals’ wellbeing but the social cohesion of modern democracies.

Despite considerable research efforts in various disciplines (e.g. psychology, economics, sociology, political science, anthropology) that try to understand these phenomena the link between academics and practitioners dealing with personal consequences of these phenomena (e.g. affected individuals, clinical psychologists, psychotherapists, counselors etc.), on the one hand, and organizations trying to address them on a societal scale (e.g. political and public health bodies, traditional media, educational institutions), on the other hand, is almost non-existent.

With this workshop, we aim to bridge this gap to find common ground between researchers, practitioners and organizations. Our goal is to draw insights from each other’s work to build collaborations that can integrate academic knowledge, individual experience, practitioners’ expertise and societal solutions. Ultimately, we want to be able to support people confronted with these phenomena in their daily lives, weaken the forces of psychological manipulation, and provide a helping hand to our ailing democratic societies.

Our aim is to bring together expertise from these different areas to discuss actionable solutions that can

  • Support affected individuals and their social networks in dealing with the real-life consequences of the effects of psychological manipulation.
  • Explore individual and organizational solutions that take a public health approach to counteracting effects of psychological manipulation based on the existing body of academic and experiential knowledge in this domain.

We plan to achieve these aims by using an innovative approach to structuring constructive debate between academics, witnesses, practitioners and organizational representatives: in four sessions, a series of brief informative presentations will be followed by group discussions in break-out rooms on a range of topics suggested by workshop attendants. The content of the presentations will serve as an invitation to brainstorm actionable solutions on specific problems identified by workshop attendees. The result of this workshop will be several collectively created documents that can serve as action plans for follow-up collaborations.

The workshop will take place 4-6 of December 2024 online, encompassing 2 days of active presentations with break-out discussions and a day in between designed for catch-up on Day 1 content to accommodate attendants’ different time zones.

Registration

To register for the workshop please fill this registration form.

Further details will be sent to participants prior to the workshop.

Program

Organization committee