By SUSAN JONES
Misinformation is a minefield we all must navigate these days as we meander through any type of media.
Some of the mistakes are inadvertent or careless, while other can be malicious, but either way it’s wise to make yourself knowledgeable about how to detect these frauds.
An exhibit at the Health Science Library System’s Falk Library in Scaife Hall is designed to teach some of the clues that expose fake information, particularly in photos or data visualizations, such as charts and graphs.
Then you can put those new found skills to the test on Jan. 19 in the Misinformation Escape Room: The Euphorigen Investigation. Players will try to unravel the truth about a chemical being added to the local water supply by decoding deepfakes, identifying bots, and finding problems with manipulated graphs.
The exhibit started last summer as a project for a library intern — Linda Purdue, who has since graduated with a masters in library and information science and gone to work at Carnegie Mellon University.
“We obviously had no concept of how long this would take,” said Kelsey Cowles, research and instruction librarian. “Linda did a lot of great work outlining things and putting together some materials,” but the project was completed after she left by Cowles and two other research and instruction librarians — Rebekah Miller and Rachel Suppok.
The exhibit includes six posters that deal with image manipulation in biomedical research, misleading data visualization, images out of context, AI-generated images and more. A table near the posters has two iPads with activities created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University where users must determine if images, videos and audio are real or AI-generated.
Books on visual misinformation also are available to borrow from the library to take a deeper dive into the problem of misinformation. All visitors to the exhibit can enter a drawing to win a $25 Panera gift card.
Cowles said the content of the exhibit “aligned with the class that we teach on visual misinformation. We wanted to get this information out there in a way that people who can’t attend our class can still access it.” They’re also hoping it drives traffic to the library, which is in the process of getting situated in a new space in Scaife.
The exhibit is up through Jan. 22. Cowles said she’s not sure how many people have checked it out, but they have been contacted by people at the Weill Cornell medical school library who want to do something similar.
The escape room is from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Jan. 19. It’s one of three misinformation escape rooms developed by the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. The escape room clues are designed for use in public libraries, Cowles said, so they’re not geared toward just an academic audience. Anyone is welcome to attend and no registration is needed.
They have run the escape room in some local public libraries and with some undergrad students at the Pre-Health Resource Center at Pitt.
The first time they did the escape room at a public library, a guy walked in and said he was going to be “really good at this. Like I definitely can tell (which are AI-generated images), and he could not tell at all,” Cowles said. He told them, “I thought this was going to be so much easier, and this is really scary that I thought I could tell and I can’t.”
Falk library is located in the Scaife Hall west wing. Enter from the Lothrop Street entrance, or take the stairs/elevators to the mezzanine level.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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