What we did in 2024… And what’s next for 2025.

Introducing MUSE, a large language model (LLM) augmented with the ability to check facts in real-time and generate responses to claims made online... and that can also speak meme!

Our neighborhood information board wasn’t foolproof, but was still a good way to keep track of what we did know, and what we didn’t.

Keeping the lines of communication open creates opportunities for more conversations to come

The ARTT team is in the process of “graduating” as a Hacks/Hackers-led project and will soon launch a new independent entity, Discourse Labs.

ARTT elections communications researcher Ross Weistroffer shares his four main takeaways from the ARTT-LEO curriculum for local elections officials about how to navigate the mistrustful waters of today’s contentious political conversations.

What are the acceptable, ethical, and appropriate uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in public health communications?

Throughout 2024, a working group is developing a set of practical guidelines and best practices for using AI in public health communications.

As we get ready to launch the ARTT Guide later this year, ARTT community coordinator Jordan Castelloe shares some insights for public health communications from #NACCHO360.

Reflecting on our work over the past six months — and looking ahead.

What are some practical insights for applying empathy in digital interactions?

A polarized political environment creates potentially hostile working conditions for election officials, making communicating with the public a daunting challenge.

Are there ways to make time on TikTok more healthy, or, fundamentally, is this not possible?

Insights from the Minnesota Department of Health’s Emergency Preparedness Coordinators Workshop

The Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust (ARTT) is conducting a pilot project throughout 2024 aimed at building the capacity of local election officials to better connect and communicate with voters.

An interview with Elizabeth Harris, behavioral scientist and social psychologist, and ARTT researcher.

How to react to a world in which AI can provide better results, but people trust the output less.

Thinking about the potential harmfulness of misinformation and rumor, we’re reminded of the ways that we’re bound together.

Conversations only work if everyone, including people with the power to make a change, is really ready to listen, and to act.

Our goal at ARTT is never “This is the way.” It’s “This is one possible way. Here is the best that we know, at this time. Here are some possible paths that you may choose.”

AI offers creative possibilities and difficult challenges for communications

When we approach each other and our communities with wonder and curiosity, much more is still possible than we can imagine alone.

Here are three takeaways from the National Forum on Best Practices to Address Health Misinformation that can help public health communicators build trust in their communities. B

On this, my “paper anniversary” with ARTT, a look back at what we’ve written so far, and of the blank pages waiting to be filled.

Engaging with and responding to online misinformation requires a significant investment of emotional labor.

More brainpower on the ARTT team means better trust-building conversations.

How fostering uncertainty can actually foster trust: Whether you decide to trust someone is heavily dependent on your "priors", the unique experiences and assumptions that inform your tendency to trust.

How do we, in practice, do the work around de-escalation?

What happened when the ARTT team met in Seattle to explore our own trust issues.

According to Peter Kim, there are basically two kinds of trust violations, and people respond to each violation in very different ways.

Done right, sharing stories can be a powerful way to develop trust with others.

While empathizing involves sharing of others’ emotions, perspective taking can help identify other’s intentions, needs, reactions, and behaviors.

A key component of building and maintaining trust is to simply listen. This is harder than it sounds, and it requires the listener to be active and present in listening. In the ARTT Response catalog, we think about listening this way:

One way that we think about creating trust-building conversations here at ARTT is that a crucial component of trust is understanding–the belief by every party that they are understood by the other, that, even though they may disagree, someone on one side of the conversation can portray the other’s point of view in a way that the other would agree is accurate and fair.

As a startup with limited resources, our goal at ARTT is to create opportunities for trusted conversations online for as many people as possible, as efficiently as possible. That means we need to think about scale. The question is, is trust something that works at a large scale?

Trust online is hard. Is it worth the risk? A lack of trust might in fact be OK. It’s appropriate that people should question information that they see, and in some cases, perhaps we’d wish they’d ask a few more. Yet, while creating and maintaining trust is so hard, we know the value of information that is accurate and can help keep our communities safe.

The Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC) will take on the continued development of the ARTT Catalog, a core component of the Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust (ARTT) Guide, an initiative focused on helping people engage in trust-building ways and facilitate constructive online exchanges around difficult topics.

The creation of the dataset provides an opportunity to observe how a news-oriented, AI-based evaluation service performs on a public health matter, in this case the topic of vaccination-related content.

The ARTT Guide software tool presents, for the first time, a unique framework of possible responses for everyday conversations around tricky topics, all informed by online information analysis, to help motivated citizens answer the question: “What do I say (and how do I say it)?”

ARTT Project Principal Investigator Connie Moon Sehat was interviewed on behalf of the ARTT project by Public Health Review Morning Edition, a daily podcast covering public health.

Ideally, the Vaccine News Quality questionnaire will serve a practical tool to help writers, editors and readers feel confident in their vaccine news quality evaluation skills. We are also interested in potentially using this questionnaire to crowdsource the annotation and evaluation of new articles.

The ARTT Guide software tool presents, for the first time, a unique framework of possible responses for everyday conversations around tricky topics, all informed by online information analysis, to help motivated citizens answer the question: “What do I say (and how do I say it)?”