UCC researcher wins Google scholarship for work on combatting conspiracy theories
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A University College Cork (UCC) researcher has been awarded a Google scholarship for his novel idea on tackling conspiracy theories.
Cian O'Mahony is hoping to address the root of why conspiracy theorists fall for outlandish ideas by using video games.
He says that engaging this group of people with factual counterarguments has been proven to be ineffective.
The PhD student believes greater gains are to be made by equipping individuals with critical thinking skills to allow them to evaluate a conspiracy theory, question its source and motivation, and ask themselves how feasible it is.
Mr O'Mahony believes that games are the way to engage people and encourage them to think critically about what they are being presented with.
"Games have been shown to be an efficient means of attitudinal change and combating misinformation for two reasons; games excel at immersing players in role-playing, allowing them to assess complex problems from alternative perspectives, and games can arguably describe complex processes in a way which is not possible through verbal or written means of communication," he explained.
Mr O'Mahony's unique idea earned him one of just two of the inaugural Irish Research Council (IRC) and Google Ireland Scholarships.
With the support of the prestigious scholarship, he intends to examine why people believe in such conspiracy theories and what interventions may help them to change their minds.
Using this knowledge, Mr O'Mahony will then build a game and assess whether or not it is capable of bringing about a more critical view of conspiracy theories.
The Google scholarship will offer unique access to the experience of a global technology company as well as the practical knowledge to develop his research, Mr O'Mahony said.
It will also allow him the opportunity to explore the potential benefits of combining his own project with existing Google initiatives such as Jigsaw which explores threats to open societies and builds technology that inspires scalable solutions.
The past number of years have shown the importance of combatting conspiracy theories and misinformation online, especially since the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.
He will be working under the mentorship of Dr Rebecca Umbach, a researcher at Google Trust and Safety, as well as with Dr Gillian Murphy and Dr Conor Linehan at UCC’s School of Applied Psychology.
The second scholarship was awarded to Kanishk Verma from Dublin City University (DCU) for his project which will combine artificial intelligence with social science to develop a systematic classification of teenagers' roles and behavioural patterns in cyberbullying.
Mr Verma is seeking to design a machine intelligent system to tackle abusive online behaviour. He will do so using data and feedback gathered from youth focus groups, working with the ADAPT Research Centre and the National Anti-Bullying Centre in DCU’s Institute of Education.
The strength of the two successful projects in the first year of the scholarship is exciting to see, said Ryan Meade, Government Affairs and Public Policy Manager at Google Ireland.
Google opened its first Google Safety Engineering Centre for Content Responsibility in Dublin earlier this year.
"Our European headquarters in Ireland is an important hub for the work we do to protect people from harmful content and make our products safer for everyone," said Mr Meade.