The Stanford Social Media Lab's Ryan Moore Earns Doctorate for Digital Literacy Work
The Stanford Social Media Lab's Ryan Moore Earns Doctorate for Digital Literacy Work
Dr. Ryan Moore successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on using short educational videos to improve older adults’ digital literacy and resilience to online deception at scale.
The Cyber Policy Center is proud to celebrate Dr. Ryan Moore, who successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on using short educational videos to improve older adults’ digital literacy and resilience to online deception at scale.
Ryan’s research, which was conducted in the Stanford Social Media Lab in collaboration with with Google’s Jigsaw and the Poynter Institute’s MediaWise digital literacy initiative, explored how 15- and 45-second educational videos teaching lateral reading, vertical reading, and reverse image search helped older adults identify deceptive content online and improved the quality of their media diets as measured in web browsing data.
Evidence from a field study on YouTube indicates that roughly 300,000 older Americans experienced a marked improvement in digital literacy skills as a result of seeing the videos.During his PhD, Ryan worked on a variety of other projects, exploring topics such as the use of virtual reality in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, news and information consumption dynamics around elections, and age differences in psychological responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.While at Stanford, Ryan was advised by Jeff Hancock, and his doctoral committee included Jeremy Bailensen, Laura Carstensen, Johan Ugander, and Byron ReevesHe will be starting as an assistant professor in the School of Information - The University of Texas at Austin in the fall.