Adventures in misinformation
I don’t know exactly when my ‘down the rabbit hole’ moment was:
The first time I got that sinking feeling misinformation wasn’t only misleading gullible people and conspiracy theorists, it was putting lives at risk.
(If you think that's an exaggeration you should read this).
Misinformation has always been with us, of course. ‘Alternative truths’ and lies are hardly new. Yet their capacity to spread and rapidly supplant the truth is.
This is thanks not just to social media but to the speed of digital communications, the 24/7 news cycle and generators of misinformation (misinformers) eager to promote untruths for fun, profit, or because it fits their political agenda.
I should have noticed Big Tobacco ‘keeping the controversy alive’ about evidence on the harms of smoking in the 1990s. Or realised in the early 2000s attempts to discredit climate scientists weren’t just the work of a few cranks.
I probably started paying attention sometime between the fake news of the UK's 2016 Brexit campaign and misinformation attacks on COVID-19 vaccines and rules that led to, among other things, pandemic deniers invading hospitals. And then of course there was the conspiracy-driven 2021 US Capitol attack.
This gut feeling about the dangers of misinformation grew once I joined the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in 2022. Every day I saw how the fall-out from rows over COVID-19 ‘lockdowns’, Brexit, and culture wars meant any research touching on climate, pandemics, sexual health, vaccines, and nutrition, is seen as fair game for misinformation attacks.
Despite having spent 15 years as a communications professional in higher education and government I wasn't sure how to respond. So at the start of 2024 I began giving myself a crash course in misinformation, reading about the latest research (Foolproof is a good place to start) and going to events and talks.
What I discovered made my head spin.
That beyond the individual attacks and conspiracy theories, misinformers targeting health and the environment and culture regularly used the same tactics and techniques, had the same goal of sowing uncertainty and division.
Even as I was still learning what misinformation was (even the terminology is tricky) I had to plan a response to misinformation attacks around things like the WHO pandemic treaty, abortion law, and measles vaccines.
What I'd thought of as somebody else's problem started to look like everybody's problem. And given the resources and determination of the misinformers it wasn't one any individual, or even any one institution, could solve alone.
So I began connecting with others trying to combat misinformation, giving talks to fellow communications professionals, posting my thoughts on LinkedIn.
I'm not an academic expert or a misinformation researcher, my perspective is a practical one from the frontlines of the media and social media battle.
What can communications professionals and others without big budgets or powerful government machinery do to help stem the tide of damaging misinformation? How can we embed counter-misinformation tactics into our everyday work? How can we advise and support those who want to join the fight?
I'll be sharing my take on the challenges here as well as an accessible and (hopefully) useful digest of the latest misinformation news and research.
Just don't be surprised if, as I keep finding, exploring one question exposes a host of others, leading you ever deeper down the misinformation rabbit hole.