A Socio-Cognitive Ecological Approach to Understanding Information Degradation in the Digital Era

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 Social media's role in shaping opinions, relationships, and communities is significant yet not fully understood, particularly regarding the interplay of media affordances, human cognition, and community dynamics. Addressing this gap, we explore a socio-cognitive approach to study the degradation of information quality in the digital era. We explore the analogy of information pollution and other analogies that can be used as starting points for examining factors at the individual (user motivations), community (presence on platforms), platform (design intentions), and larger socio-legal contexts, revealing the interconnections between these levels. The ultimate goal of this working group is to start developing a testable theoretical model, offering deeper insights into the factors contributing to degradation of information quality.