The ROMCIR 2027 Workshop

Reducing Online Misinformation through Credible Information Retrieval

Seventh Edition

To be held in conjunction with ECIR 2027: The 49th European Conference on Information Retrieval

Today, misinformation and disinformation spread rapidly across the Web, particularly through social media and messaging platforms, taking different forms of information disorder. The increasing availability of generative AI tools has made it even easier to create and disseminate convincing misleading content, including synthetic images, audio, and videos.

Misleading information can influence public opinion and political or financial decisions; fake reviews can artificially promote or damage businesses; and inaccurate health information can encourage harmful behaviors, with consequences for individuals and society as a whole. Moreover, algorithmic amplification and the rapid circulation of content across online platforms can further increase the reach and impact of these phenomena.

Because of deep fakes, you can’t trust your eyes and ears. Because of chatbots, you can’t trust that the person you’re communicating with is even human.

Maria A. Ressa — LL.D. ’24, Harvard Commencement Address (2024)

In this evolving landscape, enabling users to access and critically assess credible information is becoming increasingly challenging. Despite significant advances in misinformation detection and fact-checking, the widespread adoption of generative AI, the proliferation of synthetic and multimodal content, and the growing complexity of online information ecosystems are introducing new challenges.

Several open issues remain, including the early detection of emerging misinformation, the assessment of information credibility across different platforms and modalities, the retrieval of trustworthy evidence, and the reliability of AI-generated content. Further challenges concern the development of transparent and explainable AI solutions, the detection of coordinated manipulation, the impact of misinformation in sensitive domains such as healthcare, and the interplay between credibility, privacy, and security.

In this context, social computing plays a crucial role by combining computational approaches with the analysis of human behavior, social interactions, and information dissemination dynamics, contributing to the development of trustworthy, explainable, and user-centered solutions that support informed decision-making.

We must not simply train individuals. We must redesign the systems that fail them.

Nadia Naffi — UNESCO, Futures of Education: Ideas LAB (2025)