? SIGIR 2025 Paper Spotlight #1: Query Smarter, Trust Better? ??
Kicking off our closer looks at the SIGIR 2025 contributions from Information Science Regensburg with our full paper, which explores a question that’s more relevant than ever: Does how we search influence whether we trust the news we read?
? "Query Smarter, Trust Better? Exploring Search Behaviours for Verifying News Accuracy"
By many members of our research chair + colleagues from the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela ??
??? What we did:
We took a mixed-methods approach to understand how people search for information to verify news — and how those search strategies impact trust in misinformation.
Our three-part study included:
1?? Analyzing real-world data on search behavior & trust in fake news
2?? Simulating query strategies using LLMs to assess the impact on search result quality
3?? Testing 'Boost' UI interventions to encourage smarter search via a user study
? What we found:
? Better searches = more accurate trust
? Multiple and well-formulated queries led to better results
? Search result quality varied depending on which part of a news article inspired the query
? Interface tweaks that encourage users to thoroughly review search results seem to enhance query formulation
? Takeaway:
Search matters. How you ask influences what you find — and what you believe.
Designing tools that promote reflective, iterative searching could be a key weapon against misinformation.
? Read the pre-print version of the paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2504.05146
? Huge shout-out to all of our team members: David Elsweiler, Samy Ateia, Markus Bink, Gregor Donabauer, Alexander Frummet, Udo Kruschwitz, Bernd Ludwig, and Selina Meyer from Information Science Regensburg and Marcos Fernández Pichel, David E. Losada, and Noel Pascual Presa from the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela — what a team! ? ?????
? Stay tuned for Post #2 in the series where we’ll look at our reproducibility paper on graph-based legal case retrieval!
#NewsVerification #TrustInNews
#SearchSystems #SearchBehavior
#Misinformation #SmartSearch
#HumanCenteredIR
#InformationRetrieval #IR
#Research #LLM
#SIGIR #SIGIR2025
#ResearchSuccess #ResearchPaperAccepted
#InformationScienceRegensburg #StayInformed
