By Alex Burke

Guests filled the University of Maryland’s John S. Toll Physics Building Tuesday afternoon as Kathleen Hall Jamieson spoke about the role of misinformation in today’s public discourse. She aimed to inform the audience on how science, education and civic engagement can help push back.

Jamieson, a professor of communications and Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, is also the co-founder of FactCheck.org. This nonprofit website aims to reduce the spread of misinformation by providing original research and factual information.

Jamieson’s lecture challenged common misreadings of communication theory and emphasized the importance of increasing public understanding through facts.

“What I want to offer is the idea that we can identify consequential areas of potential misinformation and, as a result, figure out how to create mental models of the knowledge, the structures of understanding that will reduce susceptibility,” Jamieson said.

Jamieson has spent decades studying the spread of misinformation and its detrimental effects on democratic processes. Her lecture emphasized the necessity of understanding the science behind communication, how misinformation spreads and the tools needed to combat it.

Jamieson emphasized how repeated exposure to misinformation makes it more familiar and more likely to be perceived as true. She pointed to the spread of vaccine misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic as a concrete example of how it can endanger lives. 

“I’ve helped found the fact-checking movement in the United States. I believe in fact checking,” Jamieson said.

The lecture is part of an annual series established by UMD professor Howard Milchberg of the Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in honor of his late parents. Both Holocaust survivors, Renee and Irving Milchberg, experienced the firsthand consequences of replacing truth with ideology.

Milchberg emphasized the importance of taking a stand for facts in times of confusion, especially for college students.

“They’re here with open minds for the most part,” Milchberg said. “If you ignore the people on the extreme left and the extreme right, there’s a vast majority of people in the middle who are sort of reasonable and are susceptible to meaningful discussion and arguments.”

Milchberg also said the series aims to promote scientific reasoning and a respect for facts. He highlighted the importance of scientific reasoning in public discourse and how it can serve as a cornerstone for rational decision-making in a world increasingly inundated with misinformation. 

Milchberg said Jamieson was a strong fit for this year’s lecture.

“When I started this thing, I wanted to have a scientific element to it. I wanted it to speak to the honoring of facts, how to convey the truth,” Milchberg said. “And so this one sort of checked all the boxes.”

Jamieson also explored the psychological factors that make people vulnerable to misinformation, particularly biases that shape how individuals interpret new information. She noted that misinformation often exploits these human tendencies.

Students at UMD and surrounding universities attended the lecture to hear from Jamieson. Milchberg said reactions were overwhelmingly positive, a sentiment echoed by freshman public health practice major Emily McEntire.

“What stuck out to me was the way that communication was approached, from a scientific standpoint,” McEntire said. “It was also interesting to hear about the sort of disconnect of her being very knowledgeable, but also not necessarily having some of the knowledge that we do from growing up in the technology era.”

Milchberg said he hopes future lectures continue to explore the relationship between science and standing up for truth. 

“Some of the most outspoken people who insisted on the truth being told were scientists. They’re actually physicists. They were just out there at their own personal risk,” Milchberg said. “Scientists have a very special role in society as people who are accountable to facts, because if you’re not accountable to facts in physics, you’re toast.”

Featured image: FactCheck.org co-founder Kathleen Hall Jamieson speaks at the Toll Physics Building about the role of misinformation in today’s public discourse. Photo by Alex Burke, April 15, 2025.