Profile avatar
ulliecker.bsky.social
I study effects of misinformation. Professor at the School of Psychological Science and Fellow of the Public Policy Institute at the University of Western Australia Views my own.
21 posts 6,170 followers 414 following
Prolific Poster
Posts 39 Comments 7

My latest column just appeared in Science, entitled "Free speech, fact-checking, and the right to accurate information”. (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) I use one of President Trump’s first executive orders to unpack the terrain between misinformation and claims to free speech 1/n

submitted 21 days ago • 4 comments

The commissars have arrived open.substack.com/pub/insideme...

submitted 26 days ago • 2 comments

Health misinformation is way less of a problem if accurate information is easily accessible. Absence of info is a public health problem. Really worrying to see this healthjournalism.org/blog/2025/01...

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

Juste came across this interesting paper: repetition does not just cause "illusory truth" but also "illusory implications" -- people make inferences on the basis of familiar (illusory) information. @lkfazio.bsky.social @profsanderlinden.bsky.social @ulliecker.bsky.social doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

submitted 33 days ago • 4 comments

ABC, NBC & CBS dedicated about 16 minutes of airtime last night to the California wildfires without once mentioning climate change. Since the news failed do it's job, here's a short summary of the role of climate change and wildfire risk: www.noaa.gov/noaa-wildfir...

submitted 50 days ago • 1262 comments

A fascinating debate overlapping philosophy, political science, media literacy, psychology etc. is how much and which kind of a problem is D/Misinformation. This article pushes back against the "misinformation research is overly alarmist" thesis dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0... #philsky #polisky #psycky

submitted 52 days ago • 1 comment

With 17 days to go until the US takeover by the new Trump (or Musk?) administration, I thought it might be worthwhile to share a number of recent papers published by our team that counter arguments that have been leveled against misinformation research. 1/n

submitted 55 days ago • 13 comments

Just coauthored a paper that says something which may seem obvious to many but still needs to be argued: why misinformation must not be ignored. Specifically we argue that 1) misinformation is prominent & 2) has a negative impact on people psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

submitted 73 days ago • 6 comments

Very glad to see this out in American Psychologist - Why misinformation should not be ignored. "We demonstrate that the prevalence of misinformation is nonnegligible ... and that misinformation has causal impacts on important beliefs and behaviors." psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-...

submitted 74 days ago • 8 comments

Feels like weird timing, but still glad to see this out: doi.org/10.1111/pops...

submitted 103 days ago • 0 comments

Today @ulliecker.bsky.social @lewan.bsky.social & I respond @lseimpactblog.bsky.social to critics of misinfo research & set the record straight: misinfo is (i) a cause of societal ills, (ii) prevalent, (iii) impacts behavior, & (iv) can often readily be identified! blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...

submitted 143 days ago • 2 comments

Out today: Don’t believe them! Reducing misinformation influence through source discreditation rdcu.be/dRYbb

submitted 186 days ago • 0 comments

Out today: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

submitted 211 days ago • 0 comments

Misinformation remains a threat to democracy. nature.com/articles/d41... @lewan.bsky.social @naomioreskes.bsky.social @profsanderlinden.bsky.social

submitted 267 days ago • 0 comments

Our review paper “Toolbox of individual-level interventions against online misinformation” is out today in Nature Human Behaviour! Truly a team effort by an international group of experts, led by the amazing Anastasia Kozyreva. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

submitted 290 days ago • 2 comments

I am advertising a postdoc position to work on a cognitive psych project on misinformation 👇 Please share! external.jobs.uwa.edu.au/cw/en/job/51...

submitted 297 days ago • 0 comments

www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinfo...

submitted 341 days ago • 0 comments

Everyone in academia should be paying attention to this and thinking about how they/we can fight back against these bad faith attacks. As a scholar in an adjacent field targeted by some of these same bad actors, the "if you don't fight back, they'll go away" strategy is just not an option.

submitted 342 days ago • 13 comments

New paper out: Source-credibility information and social norms improve truth discernment and reduce engagement with misinformation online link.springer.com/article/10.1...

submitted 342 days ago • 0 comments

Just out in Collabra: although people generally don't usually fully revise their beliefs when misinformation is corrected, we show that it's different when the information is about people. And this is true whether the information is positive or negative. /1

submitted 385 days ago • 1 comment

There has been a lot of speculation about how generative AI will impact disinformation campaigns. This latest from me for @isdglobal.bsky.social looks at an early real-world example of how this is playing out - and it doesn't bode well. www.isdglobal.org/digital_disp...

submitted 450 days ago • 1 comment

Putting my career on the line to make a run at Goliath: www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2... Please share.

submitted 452 days ago • 49 comments

Finally out: Our paper on the role of search engines in spreading 11 conspiracy theories in 12 countries: Key results are: 1) the less stable the democracies are the bigger the share of conspiracy confirming search results will be (in our sample this... (1/3) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

submitted 461 days ago • 1 comment

I knew it!

submitted 463 days ago • 0 comments

theconversation.com/disinformati...

submitted 465 days ago • 0 comments

It’s almost like there’s is an intentional effort to threaten and silence the folks who are trying to highlight/address the toxic manipulation of online platforms. These folks don’t just want “freedom of speech”. They seem to want complete “freedom from accountability”.

submitted 466 days ago • 11 comments

Our first day where global temps were measured more than 2 degrees celsius greater than pre-industrial times. - This'll happen more often - There are a vast range of opportunities to cap how much more it happens - The fossil fuel industry would like you to ignore / not act on those opportunities

submitted 466 days ago • 1 comment

Now available online: Jagayat & Choma (2023) review similarities & diffs btw 3 social media simulation software - (Mis)information Game, Mock Social Media Website Tool, Truman Platform. Arvin Jagayat is the brain behind all of it! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

submitted 468 days ago • 0 comments

Great overview of the comparative advantages of different social media simulators (including our [mis]info game)! Super useful for working out which tool might be best for your research question 😊 Arvin’s mock social media tool is brilliant - definitely check it out if you haven’t already!

submitted 467 days ago • 0 comments

Thinking Clearly About Misinformation: http://osf.io/ke5pg/

submitted 468 days ago • 0 comments

We know way too little about mis- and disinformation from the Global South. Our studies are too US and Europe focused. Big shout out to @sumitra.bsky.social and @simonchauchard.bsky.social for this piece 👏 ⬇️ commsky polcomm polisky www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

submitted 470 days ago • 4 comments

Going to #psynom2023 later this week? Check out great work from our lab on misinformation, discourse and memory processes, and code comprehension! @mpagkratidou.bsky.social @vkjohnson.bsky.social @yewonkang.bsky.social

submitted 471 days ago • 0 comments

Happy to share another paper led by the amazing Lucy Butler (#OpenAccess): Others (dis-)endorse this so it must (not) be true: High relative endorsement increases perceived misinformation veracity but not correction effectiveness onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

submitted 482 days ago • 0 comments

Received this in the snailmail today - a really interesting selection of short articles on misinformation in CREST Security Review magazine. crestresearch.ac.uk/magazine/mis...

submitted 484 days ago • 0 comments

It's harder to get funding for basic research projects than ever before in Australia. The @arc_gov_au Discovery Projects scheme now has the lowest “success rate” ever: 16.3%. Only 1 in 6 grants are funded. Why? The funding available has plummeted. Please help, Jason Clare MP❗️

submitted 486 days ago • 1 comment

People believe that social media algorithms do amplify divisive content, such as misinformation, but they don't think such content ~*should*~ go viral finds @steverathje.bsky.social, Robertson, @williambrady.bsky.social @jayvanbavel.bsky.social doi.org/10.1177/1745... ALT

submitted 493 days ago • 1 comment

Brilliant new paper argues against the "don't trust the research" narrative in the replication crisis literature. #PhilSci #MetaSci #DevPsyc #Psychology 🧪 philsci-archive.pitt.edu/22679/

submitted 492 days ago • 4 comments

Great piece on the "To protect our free speech rights, we must take away the free speech rights of others" crowd.

submitted 492 days ago • 0 comments

Happy to see this out: New open access article in Current Opinion in Psychology, authored by @lewan.bsky.social, myself, John Cook of @skepticalscience.bsky.social, @naomioreskes.bsky.social, @profsanderlinden.bsky.social and Jon Roozenbeek. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

submitted 493 days ago • 0 comments