Google launches new campaign to combat misinformation about refugees from Ukraine

This is reported by Reuters.

Google's subsidiary Jigsaw (an organization responsible for online security) is launching a campaign against disinformation about Ukrainian refugees starting next week, based on research by psychologists from two British universities.

The information campaign will be conducted in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic in partnership with local NGOs, fact-checkers, academics and disinformation experts. The campaign aims to increase resistance to manipulative and negative narratives against refugees.

Psychologists from the universities of Cambridge and Bristol, together with Google Jigsaw, created 90-second videos designed to "inoculate" people from harmful content on social networks.

The videos will be shown in advertising slots on Google's YouTube, as well as on other platforms such as twitter, tiktok and meta, facebook. They should help people identify emotional manipulation in the news.

"If you tell people what's true and false, a lot of people will dispute ... but what you can predict are the techniques that will be used in spreading misinformation, like with the Ukrainian crisis," explained the lead author of the research report, John Rosenbeck.

Seven experiments were conducted for the study, including a group of Americans (18+) who watch political news on YouTube.

"We are thinking of this as a pilot experiment, so there's absolutely no reason that this approach couldn't be scaled to other countries," said Beth Goldberg, head of research at Jigsaw.