CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2026
| Author | Szegofi, Akos |
|---|---|
| Title | Gaming epistemic vigilance |
| Summary | How dangerous are misinformation and disinformation? What effects do they have on beliefs and behaviour, and how can we defend against them? In recent years, two schools of thought have emerged to address these questions. The first school views misinformation and disinformation as extremely dangerous, arguing that humans are overly gullible or lazy when evaluating communicated information, making them vulnerable to deception. The solution is to enhance people's cognitive abilities and motivation. The second school holds that humans are epistemically vigilant, misinformation is not a new problem, and has been dealt with throughout history. According to this view, the solutions proposed by the first school have unintended consequences: they can lead people to overestimate the prevalence of inaccurate beliefs in others, triggering widespread panic about technology and increase social polarization. This dissertation seeks to bridge these two schools of thought by demonstrating how even epistemically vigilant agents can be deceived through various methods. It then explores how modern communication environments enable the widespread use of these methods and proposes structural solutions that focus on reshaping these environments rather than attempting to “upgrade” human cognition. “Gaming” epistemic vigilance cuts both ways: epistemic vigilance can be manipulated malevolently, but it can also be aided through re-structuring communication environments in a way how they would foster the optimal usage of existing cognitive capacities. The dissertation begins with a literature review that outlines the two schools of thought and the contribution of this research. Chapters 1 and 2 present experimental studies that test two disinformation methods, documenting their effectiveness. Chapter 3 and 4 analyses the cultural evolution and usage of the "blood libel" conspiracy theory in modern communication environments. Chapter 5 offers a theoretical overview of the history of communication environments, exploring how structural solutions have been implemented to address misinformation. Finally, Chapter 6 and 7 present two experiments using social media simulations to test the effectiveness of source-rating systems in combating misinformation. |
| Supervisor | Heintz, Christophe |
| Department | Cognitive Science BA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2026/szegofi_akos.pdf |
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