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New research consortium “AI-based methods for supporting opinion-forming and participation”

 
 

Political opinion-forming is one of the fundamental principles of a functioning democracy. However, it has been subject to major changes in recent years: Along with the traditional media, various protagonists now determine public discourse, which is then often influenced by filters and echo chambers. An interdisciplinary research consortium is investigating how information can be examined and contextualized by means of artificial intelligence. This should especially benefit people with cognitive impairments. The project was selected from among more than 90 submitted applications.

The information landscape is fragmented into various content providers – the social media, influencers, messaging services, and many more. Information is often presented there without any context or indication of the source. Unlike in traditional journalism, the recipients of such information have no opportunity to verify it. This opens the door to misrepresentations, manipulation, distortion, and artificially created content. Democratic processes such as political opinion-forming and free elections are thereby disrupted, existing views are consolidated, and constructive discourse is undermined.

In a research consortium headed by Prof. Dr. Jens Gerken from the Technical University of Dortmund, an innovative software tool (KonCheck) which uses language models based on artificial intelligence is to be developed and tested. This user-friendly app will contextualize politically relevant information and evaluate it terms of its authenticity and trustworthiness.

The target groups of KonCheck are people with cognitive impairments, senior citizens, and young first-time voters. As so-called “digital immigrants,” older people often share dangerous fake news due to a lack of media literacy. Young voters, on the other hand, are often socialized within polarizing information environments as a result of their early consumption of social media and are not very open to compromise. With this app, they can ask questions about texts, view sources, access articles in simple language, and assign content to its appropriate context.

The app sets out to motivate people to participate in future by means of facilitated interaction. The development of the new AI tool is being monitored from the perspective of social psychology and communication science. The declared aim of the Ladenburg Research Network “AI-based methods for supporting opinion-forming and participation” is to assist people in their personal decision-making processes and to strengthen their resilience to manipulation.

Project partners
  • TU Dortmund University
    Prof. Dr. Jens Gerken (coordination and project management), Inclusive Human-Robot Interaction
    Prof. Dr. Jürgen Howaldt, Social Research Center
    Prof. Dr. Johannes Weyer, Social Research Center
    Prof. Dr. Matthias R. Hastall, Communication for Health, Inclusion and Participation
  • CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security
    Prof. Dr. Thorsten Holz
  • Westphalian University of Applied Sciences
    Prof. Dr. Norbert Pohlmann, Research Institute for Internet Security
    Prof. Dr. Tobias Urban, Research Institute for Internet Security
  • Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences
    Prof. Dr. Matteo Große-Kampmann, Cloud Resilience Lab
Further Information

 

 


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