News/Analysis/A question of doubt
Welcome to The Spectrum of Misinformation newsletter with misinformation news, analysis & practical advice for communicators.
In News digest, read about vaccine misinformation and resignations at the FDA, fake facts about a UK mobility scheme and returned people, Meta community note concerns, an Aussie row about off-shore wind farms, and worries about misinformation distractions. Face up to misinformation uncertainties with A question of doubt, peek behind the social media curtain in Book Club: The Facebook insider and discover if you've Missed something?
News digest
NBC News reports discredited anti-vaxxer David Geier has been hired by the US health department to study links between vaccines and autism, despite decades of research finding no link. The article notes Geier (who has no medical degree and was stripped of his medical licence in 2012) and his father:
...conducted research from a makeshift laboratory in their... basement; published several studies, many of which were retracted; and promoted an unproven treatment for autism that cost families tens of thousands of dollars and included injections of Lupron, a drug used for prostate cancer and early puberty.
The Guardian covers that, following reports of Geier's hiring, Peter Marks, the FDA’s top vaccine official, has resigned in a letter that criticises RFK Jr and the undermining of well-established vaccines:
“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”
CCN reports Florida and Alabama could introduce laws to ban non-existent dangerous 'chemtrails' from aircraft, that would also ban real geoengineering solutions, due to a well-known conspiracy theory.
CBC highlights the head of Elections Canada contacting social media firms to ask them to guard against misinformation in the country's upcoming election. An online tool, ElectoFacts has been set-up to debunk false claims about the election.
The Guardian dissects a frenzy in the UK press claiming the Motability scheme is giving free cars to people who wet the bed or are depressed. Only tiny numbers of people with such claims get mobility payments and are very unlikely to get the higher rate needed to get a car, which at any rate is not 'free' but paid for out of an existing Pip award.
BBC Verify reports that claims by the UK Government it has removed 24,000 people with no right to be in the country are misleading when at least a third of people return without assistance.
Forbes analyses if community notes, which Meta will use instead of moderation, can really combat misinformation. Concerns include verified facts being labelled false, people assuming unlabelled content is true, and firms using the system evade to responsibility for misinformation.
ABC covers misinformation about off-shore wind farms in Australia including false claims about a seabed survey, corruption claims targeting experts, and conspiracy theories about wind farms killing whales.
FT carries a column arguing that the misinformation discourse is a distraction and media fragmentation is the bigger threat to democracy.
The Observer talks to Adam Kucharski about his new book Proof. Discussing misinformation, he cites the danger of "excessive doubt".
A question of doubt
Doubt is never far away when you're investigating misinformation.
Doubt about what is and isn't misinformation, about what sources can be trusted, and about what can be done about claims and conspiracies that, like a plague of zombies, refuse to die.
Even as dangerous claims swirl around the US measles epidemic John Burn-Murdoch, writing in the FT, doubts misinformation is the problem:
The emerging democratic risk is not so much that people believe false things - they always have. It is that they no longer believe the same things as one another, false or otherwise.
He argues that where people get their news from, an increasingly fragmented media landscape with partisan outlets on the right and left driving polarisation and creating echo chambers, is more important than what that news is, if it's true or false.
Media fragmentation, loss of trust in mainstream media, fake news mills, social media echo chambers that polarise, I don't think anyone researching misinformation would deny these are huge problems.
But arguing fake news has always been with us, and describing the media landscape fragmenting as if succumbing to some natural disaster, ignores a big factor: the misinformers. These are the people who 'move fast and break things' and through promoting alt-news and social media platforms that reward outrage and hate have created the broken news landscape we inhabit.
Why break the news? Because they want to get rid of media gatekeepers and moderation. Why? Because this enables them to recruit Believers and spread the misinformation that brings them financial and political rewards.
Part of the problem is definition: the article refers to 'a narrow focus on objective falsehoods' when a 2023 study of 150 experts found most define misinformation more broadly as 'false and misleading information'. Regular readers will know The challenge of Mis-leaders.
For anyone still unsure this LSE blog makes a compelling case for the damage misinformation is doing to society.
A different doubt was raised by Adam Kucharski in an interview about his new book Proof where he quoted Henri Poincaré:
"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.” And I think that’s the danger, at the moment – that there’s this almost excessive doubt. People are just disengaging with truth altogether.
Excessive doubt leading people to disengage from the truth seems like a real risk. For example, last year Reuters Institute found 39% of people now say they sometimes or often avoid the news.
One worry is exposing misinformation could make people doubt all information. But evidence suggests this only affects ambiguous information that, while true, people find implausible. In The Psychology of Misinformation [p.129] Roozenbeek & van der Linden differentiate 'healthy skepticism' from 'unhealthy cynicism, where people come to believe nothing is true and reliable sources don't exist'.
Just attacking misinformation attacks or misinformers probably risks generating this unhealthy cynicism. That's why I'd advise any rebuttal of false or misleading claims should always be accompanied by high-quality information and explanation relevant to people's concerns with links to credible sources.
Psychology Today has a more positive spin on doubt as it explores the 'Illusory consensus effect', the phenomenon that when people encounter an idea repeatedly, they think more people believe it.
One of the examples is climate change, where people see so many statements questioning whether climate change is happening that they think lots of others are skeptical about climate change.
While correcting misinformation can work the article also suggests:
Sometimes, you don’t have to argue with the ideas... You can ask questions instead. Simply seeing questions about a claim appear on social media can lead people to be less sure of the idea and doubt it is widely shared.
So doubt, like trust, is a weapon that can be used both by misinformers and those trying to combat their claims.
It makes me think that, alongside the rebuttals and counter-arguments and stats and facts, that as well as tailoring interventions to different age groups and crossing gender and political divides, if we can empower people to ask questions about the dubious claims they encounter it could help us all resist damaging misinformation.
Book Club: The Facebook insider
The Insider is an excellent 1990s movie based on the true story of the whistleblower who exposed the lies of Big Tobacco.
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams is like a reboot for the Internet generation as the ultimate insider, Facebook's former global public policy director, lifts the lid on how the company attempted to sway elections and enabled lethal misinformation to spread long before Meta abandoned independent moderation.
It charts Wynn-Williams's journey from youthful optimism about Facebook as a power for good, through wild and entertaining corporate chaos, to deep cynicism about the firm's leadership and culture.
It gives many jaw-dropping examples about how the firm allied with misinformers, for instance brutal populist leader Rodrigo Duterte:
Using paid ads and a network of social media volunteers, his campaign chipped away at the facts, with political pages masquerading as credible sources of information to pump-out half-truths. Combined with the power of bots, fake accounts, and trolls on social media, they fabricated an alternative reality that manipulated people by sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Or details about the close relationship with Trump's 2016 campaign:
Facebook embedded staff in Trump's campaign team in San Antonio for months... targeting voters with misinformation, inflammatory posts, and fundraising messages... Many of these ads contained inflammatory misinformation that drove up the engagement and drove down the price of advertising. The more people engage with an ad, the less it costs.
Most disturbing of all are the passages on Myanmar, where Facebook was preloaded on to mobile phones and 'is the internet for nearly everyone'. For example the discovery a secret Facebook group was:
Taking over the verified accounts of anyone in Myanmar with a large following and pumping out content, lurid photos, fake news, incendiary memes, and propaganda... Spreading rumours to both Muslim and Buddhist groups that an attack from the other side was imminent. Anything that would spread hatred and fear, making people vulnerable and wanting the protection of the military. And of course Facebook would elevate this content because it received so much engagement.
In Wynn-Williams's account Facebook knew all about this and did nothing. A few months later in August 2017 the military launched a campaign of genocidal violence against Rohingya Muslims.
Careless People is a surprisingly entertaining read and positively zips along. No doubt to begin with Facebook was a wild ride, was fun, but like so much of social media, looking back, it's now impossible to ignore how its trajectory dragged us into the darkest corners of the Internet.
Missed something?
In my previous newsletter I investigated the challenge of Mis-leaders and gave update #2 on LSHTM's counter-misinformation campaign. Learn more about RFK Jr and the US surge here and read-up about who's to blame for fake news in 1/5 Generator.