Gorilla x Thinks Insight — Research­ing the Effec­tive­ness of Polit­i­cal Deepfakes

A recent study run on Gorilla into mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion has been pub­lished by Max Mawby’s team at Thinks Insight and Strat­e­gy. The study pre­sent­ed 1650 par­tic­i­pants with a range of social media posts, some con­tain­ing fake news and AI-gen­er­at­ed content, to inves­ti­gate public reac­tions to polit­i­cal dis­in­for­ma­tion.  An excel­lent summary of the study has been pub­lished by James Ball in the i news­pa­per.

The custom Social Media com­po­nent built by Gorilla Studio allowed Max’s team to present inter­ac­tive social media posts, allow­ing par­tic­i­pants to react, share, comment and report! Every inter­ac­tion was record­ed by Gorilla for behav­iour­al analysis.

This is an example social media post built in Gorilla:

Here’s how it’s set up behind the scenes in Goril­la’s Task Builder:

Thinks Insight & Strat­e­gy tested two inter­ven­tions to see whether they reduced par­tic­i­pants’ engage­ment rates with dis­in­for­ma­tion posts. Under­stand­ing how people inter­act with dis­in­for­ma­tion, and how inter­ac­tion can be pre­vent­ed, is vitally impor­tant for the preser­va­tion of democ­ra­cy. Impor­tant for all cit­i­zens, cyber-psy­chol­o­gists, and elec­tion officials!

The Social Media com­po­nent has been pub­lished to Gorilla Open Mate­ri­als, so you can now include it in your own studies.  It sup­ports a wide range of post type, and a wide range of interaction.

If you’re inter­est­ed in working with Gorilla, contact us here: