Primary supervisor

Monica Whitty

Mis/disinformation (also known as fake news), in the era of digital communication, poses a significant challenge to society, affecting public opinion, decision-making processes, and even democratic systems. We still know little about the features of this communication, the manipulation techniques employed, how to inoculate people, and the types of people who are more susceptible to believing this information.

The student can choose one of these areas to develop a proposal on.

The work will extend upon Prof Whitty's work in this field. Examples of her publications include:

Whitty, M. T., Ruddy, C., Jamil, H. (2026). Words matter: Applying the Elaboration Likelihood Model to examine the persuasive cues evident in true and fake news about the 'Indigenous Voice to Parliament'. In: Furnell, S., Clarke, N. (eds). Human Aspects of Information Security and Assurance. HAISA 2025. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 761, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-02504-3_24

Whitty, M. T., & Doherty, S. (2025). Enhancing mis-and disinformation detection and understanding its influence: leveraging communication accommodation theory and information manipulation theory. Behaviour & Information Technology, 1-20. https://doi/10.1080/0144929X.2026.2635512

Whitty, M. T. & Ruddy, C. (2025). COVID-19 lies and truths: Employing the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to gain insights into the persuasive techniques evident in disinformation (fake news), Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 20, 100797. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2025.100797

Whitty, M. T. (2025). How to conduct AI-Assisted (Large Language Model-Assisted) content analysis in Information Science and Cyber Security Research, 14(20), 4104. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics14204104

Whitty, M. T. (2025). How the voice lost its voice: Applying the dual processing theory to explain how mis/disinformation can deceive and persuade voting decision making, Journal of Information Warfare, 24(2), 93, https://www.jinfowar.com/journal/volume-24-issue-2/how-voice-lost-its-voice-applying-dual-processing-theory-explain-how-misdisinformation-can-deceive-persuade-voting-decision-making

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aim/outline

Objectives include:

Understanding susceptibility to mis/disinformation

Gaining deeper insights into what makes some types of mis/disinformation believable.

Understanding the features of mis/disinformation compared with true news

Required knowledge

  • Needs to either have:

- qualitative methods knowledge AND/OR

- statistical knowledge

  • Needs to have read up on empirical findings and relevant theories in this area.
  • Needs to show independence in developing and executing a proposal.