Technology, Democracy, and Cognition Group (TeDCog)
The TeDCog group is an interdisciplinary group hosted mainly in the School of Psychological Science that examines the pressure points between human cognition and online technologies, and the consequences for democracy that arise from those pressure points.
The Group is headed by Professor Stephan Lewandowsky. Feel free to contact him (stephan.lewandowsky@bristol.ac.uk) if you want to become involved.
The following projects are currently being hosted by the TeDCog group. Click on each icon for more detail:
- PRODEMINFOWe examine how people’s differing conceptions of “truth” can be used to design interventions to protect democratic discourse.
- SoMe4DemWe reconsider the diagnoses of democracy in crisis by examining the impact of social media on political debates and developing tools to improve their contribution to the functioning of the public arena in a liberal democracy.
- The Misinformation Future—Confronting Emerging ThreatsWe aim to investigate the effect of misinformation on future-oriented cognition and behaviours, with a focus on global long-term issues, as well as to address the unique challenges posed by visual and synthetic (AI-generated) misinformation.
The following projects have been completed:
- The Honesty ProjectWe identify factors that determine how people view honesty, and what we might do to make accuracy matter again.
- REPHRAINWe address fundamental tensions and imbalances pertaining to protecting citizens online. The REPHRAIN project remains ongoing but our input has been completed.
- JitsuVAXWe developed tools to train and assist healthcare professionals to confront vaccine-related misinformation.
- JIGSAW / Inoculation ScienceWe used inoculation theory to develop scalable interventions to protect online consumers against misleading and false information.
- The Mercury ProjectWe developed and tested interventions to assist people in distinguishing between true and false information, and we equipped practitioners with adaptable toolkits to help them reduce misinformation.
- Reclaiming individual autonomy and democratic discourse onlineWe aimed to develop cognitively and technologically sound solutions to restore people’s autonomy online.
The TedCog Handbook contains the essentials you need to know as a member of the TeDCog group.
The group has a “standard operating procedure” (SOP) for ethics related to its work. Members of the TeDCog group may view it here, where you will find a pdf containing the current version of all SOP documents, as well as a folder that contains Word versions of the individual appendices.