Public Engagement Event - Time, Trust, and Truth: How (Mis)Information Shapes What We Believe
Published: 9 April 2026
On 8 April 2026, our network hosted a public panel, as part of the University's 2026 Spring Fling: About Time programme.
On 8 April 2026, the Information Integrity Network hosted a public panel at the University of Glasgow's Advanced Research Centre, bringing together three speakers to explore how trust in information is built, exploited, and lost. Dr Adam Carter (Cogito Epistemology Research Centre) opened the session by distinguishing persuasion through evidence from propaganda that works through "ideological triggers" — emotionally charged content that bypasses rational evaluation altogether. Drawing on cases ranging from wartime recruitment posters to the discredited MMR-autism scare, he argued that the real danger lies in how easily such triggers reach people who lack the background knowledge to resist them, and warned that social media and generative AI are making this problem worse. Dr Aykut Ozturk (Politics) then turned to the use of history itself as a propaganda tool, showing how authoritarian leaders in Russia and Turkey construct narratives around a shared, sanitised past to legitimise present-day policy and cast their critics as disloyal. He explained why these narratives work: they draw on identity and emotion, and people are more inclined to believe information delivered through familiar stories.
Closing the panel, Dr Yvonne Skipper (School of Education) engaged the audience directly with a live quiz on misinformation — testing how well people can actually tell true from false news, how fast falsehoods spread compared with the truth, and how quickly harmful content reaches young people online. She then presented Project Real, a set of co-created interventions (lesson plans, videos, comics, and interactive games) developed with young people and influencers to build resilience against manipulation, alongside its related strands, Stay Real and Behind the Screen. Together, the three talks moved from the psychological mechanisms of propaganda, through its historical and political uses, to practical efforts to equip the next generation against it, giving attendees a rounded view of both the problem and the response.
The event was part of the University's 2026 Spring Fling: About Time programme.
First published: 9 April 2026