Date: 6pm, November 10th, 2025

Location: Building S3|12 on 6th Floor| Department Identitätsmanagement| Residenzschloss 1

Moderation: Prof. Dr. Andreas Kaminski (department 2)

This event is fully booked. Please send any requests for a place on the waiting list directly to fif@fif.tu-….

Away from the usual environment and outside conventional academic circles, the experimental, open format of the space is intended to reveal the full breadth of the topic. We hope this will lead to a variety of research perspectives and lively discussion.

Can technology combat disinformation?

We rarely realize the extent to which our own beliefs depend on what others tell us. But even in the area we consider to be our knowledge (and not merely our own opinions), trust in others is at least an important pillar of that knowledge. Very few of us can say, based on our own experience or logical reasoning, whether it is true that viruses exist, that Japan is a group of islands, that computers process binary states, or who won the last election.

If so much of what we consider to be our own knowledge is based on trust in others—trust in science, trust in journalism, in the media, or, more personally, trust in friends who tell us something, a doctor who explains a treatment to us, a podcaster who tells us about a court decision—then this dependence and potential trust is a vulnerable point that disinformation seeks to exploit. Disinformation makes open societies more vulnerable than authoritarian ones — the latter are better at exploiting mistrust and controlling the flow of information. This is the background that we encounter and are moved by in many forms in the news, especially at the moment.

For this reason, we would like to meet with you in a DenkRaum. We don't want to think about how to “create” trust, because mistrust can be reasonable, especially when dealing with untrustworthy sources. Instead, we want to ask a hopefully somewhat provocative question: Can information technology combat disinformation? We are deliberately framing the question in such a narrow way so that the potential solutions for dealing with disinformation become more visible. We would like to invite you to join us in exploring this question in the DenkRaum.

The sixth FiF Thinking Space will take place “Under the Roofs of Darmstadt” in the lounge of the Science Communication Center in the Residenzschloss.

The DenkRaum focused on the question of whether information technology can combat disinformation. The starting point was the observation that a large part of what we understand as our own knowledge is actually based on trust in others. Few of us can say for ourselves whether there are viruses, how a computer works or who has won an election. We rely on science, on journalism, on the media and on people who tell us something. This trust makes open societies vulnerable because disinformation attacks precisely this point. Clickbait and feedback loops carry mistrust deep into society. Open societies depend on trust being able to be re-established time and again. Against this background, the question was asked whether technical means can help to limit disinformation or whether they themselves are part of the problem.

Firstly, the contrast between fact-orientated and emotion-orientated thinking was discussed. One example was the image of a large majority of scientists against a single ‘Galileo’ figure who presents himself as the new truth. In such constellations, discussions quickly shift from the level of reasons to the level of emotions. At the same time, the proximity of algorithms to scientific thinking has been addressed. Both appear as something objective, but at the same time it often remains opaque how results are achieved.

Against this background, the question of the value of arguments arose. Arguments should provide reasons and thus make positions verifiable. However, they presuppose that those involved are prepared to accept a minimum common rational basis. If this willingness is lacking, i.e. if it is fundamentally disputed that facts should play a role at all, it becomes difficult to counter disinformation with better arguments. Examples of ‘quasi’ science, which is based on scientific hypotheses in terms of language and form, illustrate this difficulty.

The discussion also focused on the role of institutions. Trust in science, the media and other social institutions is a prerequisite for arguments to be considered relevant at all. At the same time, it is clear that mistrust cannot simply be resolved by appealing for more trust. Mistrust can certainly be justified, for example if sources are actually unreliable. However, anyone who subscribes to a conspiracy ideology is unlikely to be convinced by referring to other, ‘reasonable’ perspectives. How can such people be won back as participants in a rational discourse? Therefore, the question was not (only) how trust can be established, but how the relationship between trust, disinformation and technical solutions can be described at all.

Of course, the DenkRaum could not provide any ready-made answers in this respect. Rather, the possible solution space was mapped out. The question was raised as to whether legal approaches are needed to regulate platforms or players (such as the tech giants) more strictly. Legal procedures, on the other hand, are relatively lengthy. How is the slowness of the law compatible with the speed of technical developments? It was also asked whether social connections and lived, personal relationships of trust are not ultimately more important than technical control mechanisms and, in turn, only have a limited effect on questions of trust in technology. It remained open whether technology can actually combat disinformation or whether it is rather one condition among many. Don't social recognition and inequality also play an important role in the issues that people fight for and in what they place their trust in? On the other hand, how can the loss of trust in state institutions and politics that can be observed in Germany be explained? And how could trust be (re)built here?

In any case, it became clear that disinformation, trust in institutions, the value of arguments and technological developments are closely interlinked and that any answer to the initial question must take precisely these interdependencies into account.