Canada Research Chair looks at what pushes people to online extremes

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With more ways than ever to connect and connect, it's vital to understand all of the ways that messages can get scrambled.

What we read, see and share contributes to our lives every day, which makes research by Interdisciplinary Studies professor Jaigris Hodson, Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Digital Misinformation, Polarization and Anti-Social Media all the more important.

Hodson's new research focus, she says, is that she sees those three topics - digital misinformation, polarization and anti-social media - not as distinct but as linked "But they're not linked in a linear way," Hodson says.

Online challenges a 'big web jumble'

"We can't say that it is always the case, say, that misinformation will cause us to become more polarized, and then that polarization will cause us to lash out and be mean to each other online," she says. "Sometimes, if somebody is mean to you online, that may be what causes you to be polarized and the polarization, in turn, will increase your susceptibility to misinformation. Or sometimes misinformation can lead directly to demonizing a certain group, which leads online harassment - and then that, in turn, will polarize.

"So, it's a like big web jumble."

Hodson says she came to this understanding of the fraught online worlds in which we live while in her previous research cycle studying digital communication for the public interest, or how to make research communications more effective while addressing issues of harassment directed at researchers.

The critical element to that realization was viewing the three online challenges she's taken on as a topic through a public health lens.

Taking a public health approach

"What I came to realize is that these three are interacting in a complex system," she says. "And because I had studied COVID misinformation… I began to notice the parallels between a public health understanding of complex health conditions and the kind of understanding that we need to describe what I'm calling information health conditions."

She landed on the health term "syndemic" - one definition says, "Syndemics occur when two or more diseases or health conditions cluster and interact within a population because of social and structural factors." An example Hodson offers in the health realm is HIV/AIDS, which is more likely to occur along with substance use disorder and certain socio-economic conditions.

Hodson says misinformation, polarization and online anti-social behaviour operate as "an information syndemic."

"They co-occur. They make each other worse. And they're more likely to occur together within specific populations that are made vulnerable because of things like economic conditions or behaviours or the technologies they use or their social groups."

Productive disagreement

Putting these online social issues in a public health frame means there may be solutions found in public health approaches, she says - and that's what her Canada Research Chair time will be spent studying.

"We should be trying to understand more about why people feel the way they do in these areas and what are really the levers that are pushing people towards a polarized or misinformed point of view."

"Addressing that without stigmatizing is really key," Hodson adds

And just as public health teaches people about hygiene or disease avoidance, a public health approach to online conflict may be teaching people about information hygiene and the avoidance of misinformation, and how to have conversations even when they disagree - "productive disagreement" - perhaps using an AI-powered tool.

"We're not going to always see eye to eye," Hodson says. "But we're not looking for the small percentage of people at either ends of the spectrum. We're just looking for the majority of people to be able to have better conversations."

Learn more about RRU Interdisciplinary Studiesprograms.