Analysis Frameworks
How do experts understand information?
When it comes to analysis, engaging in a productive conversation can be helped by understanding the information better. But sometimes information can be complicated. It can depend on what background or disciplines the participants in the conversation are coming from.
Here are four different “lenses,” or interpretation frameworks, that our team has explored to include:
Lens: Journalists, Health and Science Communicators
Vaccine News Quality Framework
How high-quality is this information?
What are ways that journalists and other communicators understand higher quality information? Over the past century, practices have emerged that can help us know when a report or article might uphold certain values of journalism, such as accuracy, impartiality, verifiability and transparency.
This framework, relying on insights from journalists and health communicators, incorporates three categories of quality to evaluate vaccine-related news.
Lens: Fact Checkers, Content Moderators
Online Misinformation Harm Framework
How urgent is it to respond?
Fact checking and content moderation teams have long acknowledged the challenges posed by harmful communication within social media and other spaces on the internet.
Understanding that misinformation can be harmful, project members and partners tied to the UW Social Futures Lab have developed a framework to aid in characterizing magnitudes of misinformation as a harm to understand how urgent certain types of content may be to address. This framework draws from existing research in the related fields of cyber-harms and hate speech.
Lens: Psychologists
Psychological Manipulation Tactics Framework
Are there persuasive or misleading tactics being used?
What makes a piece of content particularly persuasive or convincing? Generally, it is because of how the information is being presented. Psychologists have identified a number of manipulative techniques designed to persuade an audience to feel or think a certain way. These techniques are effective because they take advantage of the way humans naturally perceive or react to information, and can be all the more worrisome if the information is misleading or false.
This framework helps to recognize and expose the presence of these manipulative tactics.
Lens: Philosophers, Social Scientists
Community Trust Issues Framework
What trust issues are brought up?
Although we understand its importance, trust is not easily understood. When it comes to the topic of vaccines, levels of trust may be understandably rooted in fear and uncertainty, a distrust of institutions, or within the complicated nature of vaccine development.
To address this, we are building a prototype database that contains high-quality question and answer resources developed by many community leaders that are in alignment with authoritative guidance on vaccines.
