Tricia Moravec
I am getting back into academia in the US after taking extended leave to care for an ailing parent in New Zealand. I have research ongoing and look forward to getting back into the classroom.
Most recent role:
Assistant Professor
Operations and Decisions Technologies
Kelley School of Business
Indiana University
ABOUT
I was an assistant professor in the Department of Operations and Decision Technologies at the Kelley School of Business at the Indiana University. I left in 2024 to move to New Zealand to care for my husband’s ailing father. Now that we have supported his family as we intended we are moving back to the states. I am already back in a thriving research stream and I look forward to getting back in the classroom in 2027.
My research studies fake news and propaganda in the social media and AI contexts. I am interested in the influence of social media and AI use on beliefs, cognition, and manipulation detection. My recent research combines online experiments with field experiments and econometrics. The combination of the two allows us to answer questions on both what happens and why/for whom. My research has found that Facebook’s original misinformation flag was ineffective to change user beliefs, but does influence cognition of users exposed to the flag. Given that users showed increased cognition due to the flag, my next research project demonstrated a method for designing interventions that would influence user belief. A multi-method study showed that simple interventions pointing out possible propaganda from state-controlled media can be highly effective in turning social media users away from state-controlled accounts. This research has a natural progression into AI labeling, as well as the influence of AI on propaganda exposure, both of which are current works-in-progress.
I am quadruply a Hoosier, first being born in Indiana, second earning my undergraduate degrees in physics and astronomy/astrophysics from Indiana University, third earning my master’s in information systems from Indiana University Kelley School of Business, and finally earning my PhD in Information Systems also from the Kelley School of Business. I spent time in Chicago with KPMG as an associate consultant in their CIO Advisory practice before starting my PhD. After my PhD I joined the IROM department at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. After three valuable years in Austin I moved back to Indiana University to be closer to family. On a more personal note, I am a quadruplet, giving me an easy, automatically interesting fun-fact whenever the situation requires one.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
August 2023
Alerting social media users to propaganda
Information Systems Research (ISR)
January 2022
Misinformation Rating Creation
Information Systems Research (ISR)
March 2021
COVID-19 PSAs
JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
September 2020
Misinformation Flagging
Information Systems Research (ISR)
November 2019
Misinformation Flagging and Cognition
Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ)
GET IN TOUCH
If you are interested in my research, either as the media or a prospective student, please feel free to reach out at <patriciamoravec>@gmail.com.
