Our next EDMO BELUX Lunch Lecture will take place on September 15th, 2025, at 12:00-13:00 CEST. Join us for our webinar, where Nick Anstead and Bart Cammaerts will present preliminary findings of a study on exposure to visual misinformation during recent elections in several countries.
Attendance is free but registration is required here.
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What visual misinformation appears in social media feeds when accounts follow partisan actors during elections? This presentation introduces some preliminary findings and ongoing research objectives for a study conducted across four national elections in 2024 in Belgium, France, the United Kingdom and the United States. For the study, two dummy accounts were set up, each on four social media platforms: Twitter / X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok for each country. Each account would either follow influential right-wing or left-wing accounts, with the aim of training the algorithm to reveal visual misinformation that users might be encountering on the platform. Visual misinformation that appeared on their feeds was gathered and archived. The first analysis of the data gathered involved a content analysis, comparing country-specific dataset as well as looking for evidence of visual disinformation created by artificial intelligence image generators. The findings in this regard are somewhat surprising. AI does play a role, but other forms of visual misinformation are also prominent in the dataset. Furthermore, the aim of AI generated visual misinformation is not always to mislead, but rather produce content that is obviously not real, but plays into well-established and false political narratives and talking points. The presentation will also incorporate the preliminary results of a set of interviews with experts in each of the four countries.
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Nick Anstead is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research focuses on political communication practices and their relationship with political institutions, as well as the evolution of political campaigns in comparative perspective. Additionally, he has researched the ways in which political ideas develop, circulate and are used in debate.
Bart Cammaerts is Professor of Politics and Communication in the Department at Media and Communications of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research focuses on the relationship between media, communication and resistance with particular emphasis on democracy, media strategies of activists, media representations of protest, alternative media and counter-cultures, media histories, political theory and broader issues relating to power, participation and public-ness.