Lisa Fazio

Media Appearances

• YouTube is cracking down on anti-vaccine misinformation

  YouTube's action is potentially significant because of its impact on the misinformation ecosystem. "A lot of the vaccine misinformation you see on other platforms links to YouTube videos," said Lisa Fazio, an associate professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University who has studied misinformation. "It was a major loophole in our information ecosystem that it was so easy to post blatantly false information about vaccines on YouTube and have it gain large audiences."

  September 29th, 2021

• YouTube is banning prominent anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

  That dynamic is often overlooked in discussions about coronavirus misinformation, said Lisa Fazio, an associate professor at Vanderbilt college who studies misinformation. “YouTube is the vector for a lot of this misinformation. If you see misinformation on Facebook or other places, a lot of the time it’s YouTube videos. Our conversation often doesn’t include YouTube when it should,” Fazio said.

  September 29th, 2021

• The unwitting are the target of COVID-19 falsehoods online

  Sharing other people’s posts or photos out of context is a common tactic in the disinformation playbook because it’s an “easy, cheap way to gain credibility,” said Lisa Fazio, a Vanderbilt University psychology professor who studies how false claims spread.

  May 14th, 2021

• Biden’s plan to fight online harassment could set up new confrontation with tech companies, experts say

  “I think this particular task force plan aims to address a real need,” said Lisa Fazio, a Vanderbilt University professor of psychology and human development who studies the effects of misinformation. “We know these platforms are consistently the source of online harassment and threats to women, and there’s a connection to extremist consequences.”

  November 10th, 2020

• Election results misinformation, fraud claims threaten to distort Americans' views of the democratic process

  “We often remember the content of information while forgetting the source or who said it,” said Lisa Fazio, assistant professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University, who has studied the effects of misinformation. “Over time, we might remember the allegations of voter fraud but forget that they came from an unreliable source.”

  November 6th, 2020

• Twitter did a better job than Facebook at reining in Trump's false election posts, misinformation experts say

  "I've been fairly impressed with Twitter's follow-through," said Lisa Fazio, assistant professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University. She said that although Facebook's information labels tend to be more detailed than Twitter's, the fact it places no sharing restrictions means "false information can still quickly spread on the platform."

  November 5th, 2020

• Here are all the steps social media made to combat misinformation. Will it be enough?

  The measures range from changing algorithmic recommendations to limiting users’ abilities to share falsehoods. But some experts are doubtful the changes, enacted as hundreds of thousands of Americans have already cast votes, are sufficient. Others have criticized the lack of transparency into how these changes are applied. “I am concerned right now the future of our democracy is in the hands of very few people at these tech companies,” said Lisa Fazio, a professor at Vanderbilt University who studies the spread of misinformation.

  October 30th, 2020

• Out-of-context photos are a powerful low-tech form of misinformation

  When you think of visual misinformation, maybe you think of deepfakes – videos that appear real but have actually been created using powerful video editing algorithms. But the majority of visual misinformation that people are exposed to involves much simpler forms of deception. One common and decidedly low-tech technique involves recycling (posting) legitimate old photographs and videos and presenting them as evidence of recent events.

  February 14th, 2020

• Can old-fashioned journalism combat fake news?

  Whether created by spammers, grifters, conspiracy theorists, or propagandists, sites that conceal or play down their ownership and financing, blend news with advertising, and routinely publish misinformation are widespread on the internet. And it’s not always easy to distinguish these sites from the ones operated by those acting in good faith. “There are so many sites now that it’s hard to know which ones are credible and aren’t credible,” says Lisa Fazio, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville who studies how people process information. “It takes a lot of effort and cognitive brainpower to really think through our prior knowledge on a topic, so we tend not to do that.”

  February 7th, 2019

• Want to make a lie seem true? Say it again and again and again.

  The effect works because when people attempt to assess truth they rely on two things: whether the information jibes with their understanding, and whether it feels familiar. The first condition is logical: People compare new information with what they already know to be true and consider the credibility of both sources. But researchers have found that familiarity can trump rationality—so much so that hearing over and over again that a certain fact is wrong can have a paradoxical effect. It's so familiar that it starts to feel right. "When you see the fact for the second time it's much easer to process—you read it more quickly, you understand it more fluently," says Vanderbilt University psychologist Lisa Fazio. "Our brain interprets that fluency as a signal for something being true"—Whether it's true or not. In other words, rationality can be hard. It takes work. Your busy brain is often more comfortable running on feeling.

  February 11th, 2017