Project description
Understanding truthful information in the digital age
In today’s digital world, both information and misinformation spread quickly. Online, the pressure to rapidly share opinions often leads to false or misleading statements. However, concerns over reputation and trust still motivate people to communicate truthfully. The ERC-funded COST-X project will study how social costs and incentives influence honest communication, and how digital platforms alter the reputational infrastructure that keeps communication reliable. Combining methods from linguistics, psychology, philosophy and game theory, COST-X will empirically test novel hypotheses about communicative norms and the spread of misinformation online. Its findings will help develop actionable strategies to tackle fake news and improve our understanding of communication in the digital age.
Objective
In our digital era, characterised by easy access to both information and misinformation, understanding the mechanisms that encourage truthful communication is more crucial than ever. Despite the social and ethical importance of these issues, however, we lack a unified framework to systematically investigate the social incentives that motivate speakers to communicate truthfully.
COST-X will inaugurate a novel, interdisciplinary, empirically-minded approach to studying communicative norms. The project’s overarching goal is to develop a new methodology, grounded in Costly Signalling Theory, to study how norms and reputation underlie truthful communication, offline and online. Adopting this new lens, COST-X will radically change our understanding of a diversity of phenomena relating to truthfulness: (i) the nature and epistemic function of communicative norms; (ii) deniability and indirectness in speech; (iii) testimonial transmission of knowledge; and (iv) online communication. It will inaugurate a new field of study, digital infrastructure epistemology, which investigates how misinformation spreads by attending to how online platforms alter the reputational infrastructure that motivates speakers to be truthful.
Methodologically, COST-X will bring rigorous analytic thought into dialogue with empirical research. Theoretical assumptions will be tested empirically, and theory-building will profit from interdisciplinary cross-pollination from linguistics, biology, game theory, epistemology, and psychology. It will be of high scientific value to all disciplines investigating, or building on, human communication and its norms. Its findings on online communications will have practical uses, establishing philosophical foundations to better understand and tackle the spread of fake news – thus bolstering support for democratic institutions, which rely on a healthy information environment to function properly.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion philosophy epistemology
- humanities languages and literature linguistics
- social sciences psychology
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
- Epistemic norms
- Costly Signalling Theory
- Speech act theory
- Epistemology of Testimony
- Epistemology of Digital Media
- Experimental Philosophy
- Philosophy of Language
- Experimental Pragmatics
- Misinformation
- Truthfulness
- Deniability
- Fake News
- Reputation
- Trust and Credibility
- Experimental Psychology
- Media Studies
- Digital Governance
- Online Communication
- Social Epistemology
- Philosophy of Language
- Pragmatics
- Linguistics
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
10124 TORINO
Italy
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.