Epic Sock Puppet Theater

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An interactive animatronic sock puppet theater that performs social media posts from real disinformation accounts, building resistance to online manipulation.

Initiator(s)

Derek Curry, Jennifer Gradecki

Description

Epic Sock Puppet Theater is an interactive animatronic puppet theater, in the form of a Punch-and-Judy-style puppet booth, that helps the public identify and resist online disinformation. Participants use arcade buttons, a joystick, or a touchscreen to select real social media posts from a database of "sock puppets," or imposter accounts from verified disinformation campaigns, and watch the puppets perform.
The project is based on inoculation theory, the principle that careful, preemptive exposure to disinformation can build resistance to it, as a vaccine builds immunity. The puppet show uses techniques from Brechtian Epic Theater to expose participants to disinformation while maintaining critical distance, so they can reflect on the tactics rather than react to the content. The work has been restaged and adapted for different contexts, including a version reworked to adhere to new restrictions on minors' social media use.

Goals

Epic Sock Puppet Theater exposes the tactics of online disinformation campaigns, so people can recognize and resist them on their own. Rather than shielding people from disinformation, the project carefully exposes them to it, drawing from datasets of verified sock-puppet posts released by researchers, government agencies, and journalists, to help them identify other “sock puppet” accounts and disinformation tactics, so they become less susceptible to manipulation and polarization, and less likely to unwittingly share disinformation.

Beneficial outcomes

Epic Sock Puppet Theater builds resistance to disinformation through controlled, critically-distanced exposure to real posts from documented sock puppet accounts. By revealing how these accounts provoke outrage against some groups while fostering an exclusionary sense of pride in others, the project helps participants recognize how disinformation campaigns weaponize political, racial, religious, and cultural identities across the spectrum to polarize the public. This recognition carries beyond the installation. Research shows that exposure to one sock puppet helps people identify others, so participants become more resistant to this type of manipulation in their own social media feeds.

Location

Germany, Italy, Australia

Users

Anyone can interact with the installation, using the arcade controls to select and view social media posts performed by the puppets.

Maintained by

Derek Curry and Jennifer Gradecki

Duration

2023 - ongoing

Category

Scientific
Pedagogical
Politics
Urban Development
Economy
Environment
Social

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