ERC Consolidator Grant: We need resilient knowledge to be able to resist fake news
How should the media and politicians communicate factual evidence to build resilient knowledge in the public? Could personal case reports be the way forward? Professor of Political Science Lene Aarøe believes so and has now received EUR 2 million from the European Research Council to investigate this question.
A well-functioning democracy requires citizens to actively pay attention to true factual evidence, remember it and apply it to form perceptions and opinions about political issues and to reject misinformation.
Still, resilient knowledge is under serious pressure in a number of crucial areas, including climate change, immigration, crime and democratic elections. In fact, the World Economic Forum identifies misinformation as the most pressing global challenge, and news avoidance, declining trust in factual knowledge and increased populism are exacerbating the situation.
How can we overcome this global threat? The answer may be provided by a new ERC project led by Lene Aarøe, professor of political science at Aarhus BSS at Aarhus University. With an ERC Consolidator Grant of EUR 2 million, she is going to investigate what type of knowledge sticks with us in a way that makes us better at forming opinions and taking a stand on an informed basis, as well as resisting fake news and other misinformation, for example as a result of artificial intelligence.
Lene Aarøe illustrates the challenge with an example from the time of the coronavirus pandemic: During the pandemic, people were informed that vaccines reduce the risk of serious illness. If they did not hear it, forgot the information immediately or rejected it when confronted with false rumours, they did not have the necessary knowledge to make an informed choice about whether or not to get vaccinated. When citizens were given factual information, remembered it and used it to decide whether to get vaccinated, it became resilient knowledge.
Resilient knowledge is a new concept introduced by the FACTRES project: “Resilient knowledge is robust and enduring. It is knowledge we can work with. It is not easily overturned and is resistant to competition from misinformation and our fleeting attention span in general, which is important at a time when our attention is constantly challenged,” explains Lene Aarøe.
Emotional engagement is vital
Lene Aarøe’s hypothesis is that case reports combined with statistical information can be a tool for building resilient knowledge more effectively:
“Human cultures universally tell stories to each other and use them as a tool for learning. Research literature indicates that we find it easier to relate to specific personal stories that provide us with vivid images of a given topic. Case reports grab our attention. They are easier for us to remember and recount. And we find it easier to form opinions based on them compared to abstract evidence,” says Lene Aarøe, continuing:
“People are not particularly attentive to statistics and graphs and are not particularly emotionally affected by such information. That is why they do not have a lot of impact. Concrete stories, on the other hand, can help illustrate a societal problem and assist people in understanding what, for example, a new political proposal is all about. Linking to the personal story of a concrete citizen helps to illustrate what the political proposal is about.”
Who will benefit?
Lene Aarøe expects that two groups of people in particular will benefit greatly from the combination of personal stories and statistical information: People who have difficulty understanding abstract information such as statistics, and citizens with populist attitudes.
“We know from earlier research that populist attitudes are associated with anti-elitism and mistrust. Statistics are a traditional form of evidence that is often met with mistrust as to the origins of figures and who said what,” says Lene Aarøe.
"Personal case reports, on the other hand, bring the information closer to people’s everyday lives by linking it to specific individuals. Those who will benefit most from abstract information being combined with concrete case reports are both people who traditionally find statistics difficult to understand and also people who traditionally find it difficult to trust them,” she continues.
Someone to play ball with
Preparing an ERC application is a demanding and time-consuming process. Lene Aarøe is delighted to have come out on the other side with one of the coveted grants.
“I think this is a really important research project and one that focuses on an important societal challenge. I’m really looking forward to finding out how we can build resilient knowledge. For me and the rest of the project group working with this for the next five years is extremely meaningful,” she says.
Lene Aarøe is also extremely grateful for the help and support she has received from various parts of the university while working on the application: AIAS, where the elements of the idea first germinated, the Research Support Office and a faculty review organised by the deputy head of department, which provided valuable feedback from researchers from multiple departments. In particular, she wants to thank her colleagues at the Department of Political Science – including the head of department – for their crucial feedback and interview training:
“The discussions I’ve had with my colleagues at the department have been extremely inspiring and a very positive part of this process. For that I’m grateful. Being part of a research environment where people help each other is a privilege. Being able to bounce ideas off each other in the development of ideas requiring high-level innovation – and experiencing this as a senior researcher, where you can often feel a little more isolated in your everyday life – is very positive.”
Christoffer Green-Pedersen, Head of the Department of Political Science, is proud that Lene Aarøe and the department have once again – for the third time in six months – secured an ERC grant:
“Lene’s project is both original and innovative, and at the same time addresses a societal challenge of extreme relevance, so for it to now receive a very attractive research grant if fantastic. As a department, we’re also incredibly proud to have secured three ERC grants this year. This demonstrates that our researchers are among the best in the world, and that we can provide them with the support they need to successfully attract funding in a highly competitive environment.”
Further information
ERC Consolidator Grants are awarded to promising young researchers with 7–12 years of experience post-PhD and who are in the process of consolidating their own independent research group.