Dear RSF:
 
Please join us next Wednesday, February 21 at 11 in the library and on Zoom for Visiting Scholar Adam Berinsky’s presentation, “Political Rumors and Misinformation”. Click on the links: article 1, article 2, for the two background articles that he hopes will provide context for the talk.
 
Berinsky is the Mitsui Professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has been since 2003, and serves as director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab (PERL). He is also a Faculty Affiliate at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS).Berinsky holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Michigan and a BA in Government from Wesleyan University. He is the author of four books, including Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It (Princeton, 2023). Berinsky is a specialist in the fields of political behavior and public opinion. His research focuses on the political behavior of ordinary citizens. While he is primarily concerned with questions of representation and the communication of public sentiment to political elites, he has also studied the continuing power of ethnic and racial stereotypes, the effect of voting reforms, survey research methodology, and public opinion concerning foreign policy.
 
At RSF, Berinsky is working on a project which explores how a person’s mode of perceiving, thinking, and problem solving relates to belief in misinformation. He is conducting experiments to develop behavioral interventions that encourage the use of deliberative and analytical thinking when engaging with information online.