Epic Sock Puppet Theater : artistic tactics for mitigating online disinformation

Abstract

This case study presents the artistic research and production process for an interactive installation, Epic Sock Puppet Theater (ESPT), that uses artivist tactics to engage with the divisive socio-political content of online disinformation campaigns. The project allows viewers to interact with a dataset of social media posts made by “sock puppets” or imposter accounts used as part of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns so the viewer can become better equipped to recognize disinformation in their own social media feeds, less susceptible to its negative effects and less likely to unwittingly share it. The project is based on inoculation theory, a biological metaphor for building resistance against future disinformation through careful preemptive exposure to disinformation messages, as well as research that found that the revelation of a sock puppet account helped social media users identify other sock puppets spreading disinformation. In this case study, we summarize our research, user testing, and artistic process as a resource for others who may be interested in combining research, art and activism. Through our research and experimentation, we carefully selected artistic tactics, focusing on techniques from Brechtian epic theater to present emotionally and politically charged content that is designed to polarize viewers in a way that allows for critical reflection. The result is an artistic solution to a socio-technical problem: an animatronic sock puppet theater that simultaneously helps to familiarize and distance the public from online sock puppet disinformation, to creatively mitigate its negative effects.