Finalist: Tara Lin
California College of the Arts, 2020

Website: https://www.tarafanlin.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taralin/

Information is fragile. Incentivized by the attention economy on social media, information can easily turn into misinformation. Misinformation can have a detrimental effect on people’s safety, democracy, and the public perception of news and science. However, using facts and figures to convince people is not enough to solve this problem. Misinformation not only stems from the incentive structure of social media but also the ritualistic aspect of information communication.

This speculative project experimented with validation-driven social media. Replace the familiar “like” “share” “comment” “retweet” buttons with investigative tools that stimulate people’s curiosity for validation.