News/Analysis/Events special!
The Spectrum of Misinformation returns with misinformation news, analysis & practical advice for communicators.
In News digest, read about BBC delivering misinformation training, RFK Jr's fake citations, TikTok mental health video misinformation, lawyers using AI to make up cases, conspiracy theories about robo-Biden, Area 51, and chemtrails, plus the fake miracle cures killing cancer patients and common protest misinformation. Then join an expedition across Information deserts and discover what's happening in our Events special! before playing Catch-up.
News digest
BBC will expand fact-checking service BBC Verify and give every child "proper training on disinformation" Tim Davie has said. The Guardian highlighted his comments about a "trust crisis" and plans to increase BBC News content on YouTube and TikTok.
CBS reports on misinformation circulating on social media following the deadly shooting of a Minnesota lawmaker.
USA Today highlights RFK Jr's 'Make America Healthy Again' report cited non-existent research papers and misrepresented real studies.
AP details how members of RFK Jr's new CDC vaccine panel are known for spreading vaccine misinformation.
The Guardian uncovers just over half of the top 100 mental health videos on TikTok contain misinformation. The most common form of misinformation was unevidenced treatments or false claims.
AP reports a UK judge has warned lawyers are citing fake cases generated by AI in court, in one case a lawyer cited 18 cases that do not exist. The judge said presenting false material could lead to charges of contempt of court or perverting the course of justice.
Reuters covers Trump using screenshots of Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to try to back up his false claims about the mass killing of white farmers in South Africa.
The Independent highlights Trump sharing a baseless conspiracy theory Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced with a robotic clone.
Wall Street Journal claims the Pentagon deliberately spread misinformation that fuelled UFO conspiracy theories about Area 51, circulating fake photos and omitting key details to protect secret US weapons programmes (see MSN).
The Guardian reports India blocked X accounts from Chinese state media outlets that it accused of spreading Pakistani propaganda and misinformation following clashes in Kashmir.
France 24 looks at how, with the decline in human moderation on social media, people are turning to AI chatbots to factcheck stories but these often repeat disinformation or fabricate details in their responses.
The Standard quotes US doctors warning cancer patients are dying because they are choosing fake 'cures' on social media, such as coffee colonics and vitamin C infusions, rather than conventional treatments.
Mashable explores common types of misinformation shared about protests such as paid protestors, bricks stockpiled as weapons, and footage that's recycled or from hyperrealistic videogames.
The Guardian reports 8 US states have now introduced legislation to prohibit "geo-engineering" or "weather modification" in a bid to combat non-existent 'chemtrails', part of a well-known conspiracy theory.
Euronews reports police have been praised for swiftly sharing the ethnicity and nationality of a man who drove a car into crowds celebrating Liverpool FC, dampening misinformation about the attack. Sander van der Linden said: "Information voids are almost a gravitational force for conspiracy theorists."
Interesting new articles on research include Nature on how to talk to vaccine sceptics, PR Say on malicious AI swarms that threatens democracy, and The Conversation on why 'AI slop' in the form of fake photos and videos is taking over your newsfeeds. Also see: a paper in Nature on research in China showing shifting people's attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation.
Information deserts
Recently I've been thinking a lot about not just misinformation but where it fits in the information environment.
One of the criticisms of many counter-misinformation approaches is that they focus too much on what's there, eg fake news, and not enough on what isn't: accurate and accessible high-quality information.
Some call the places lacking this high-quality information 'information voids', but I think deserts are a better analogy.
Deserts aren't empty, there are resources but they're scarce, difficult to reach. Deserts can sustain life but they are hostile environments.
In the same way we talk about food deserts, where people don't have ready access to affordable fresh and healthy food to eat, so in many places, both online and offline, people may not have access to 'healthy' high-quality information.
Where this is the case 'junk' information, including fake news and extremist counter-narratives, are ready to exploit people's thirst for easy answers especially when life is hard or things go wrong.
An information desert could be a social media platform that serves up relentlessly one-sided content about the 'ideal' body to teenage girls. Or it could be conspiracy-adjacent thinking about immigration or powerful elites that circulates in families or between parents at the school gates.
The problem here is, like food deserts, the people inhabiting online and offline deserts may not know about or face barriers accessing (educational, digital, cultural) a 'balanced' information diet.
So while I think fighting dangerous misinformation is vital this needs to go hand-in-hand with thinking about how to ensure those groups most vulnerable to misinformation have access to high-quality misinformation on key topics.
This isn't just about media or digital literacy (although this is also important), it's about whether the information sources actually exist.
In LSHTM's recent work looking at vaccines, for example, it's been eye-opening to discover that there is no 'one-stop shop' accurate in-depth information source that addresses the common questions/concerns that people have that are often amplified/exploited by misinformers.
In fact when it came to measles and measles vaccines, we realised that we needed to create our own explainer, drawing together the information and data that was scattered across a range of websites or even buried in data dumps or technical notes. Read the results here.
Just as with debates about unhealthy eating, it's unfair to blame people for consuming junk information if you don't make healthy information as available, relatable, and useful as possible.
As I was discussing recently with a counter-misinformation colleague, perhaps we should all be writing explainers about how to write a good explainer, or running courses to help everyone research, write, and present information on sensitive topics in a way that can help the information desert bloom.
Events special! [Campaign notes #4]
It's taken 6 months of planning but this week we were finally able to announce that LSHTM will be hosting an event on health misinformation in London on 15 September 2025.
LSHTM's Health Misinformation UNPACKED is designed to be the opposite of a dry academic conference. Instead, it's a fast-paced public-facing event that aims to educate a broad audience of academic experts, communicators, and funding and charity professionals about dangerous health misinformation in the UK and share inspiring ideas for what, collectively, we might do about it.
As someone who had never organised an event on this scale before, coming up with the vision, format, and programme, as well as researching and approaching speakers, has been incredibly challenging and would've been impossible without help from very supportive colleagues.
Expect short key notes on topics including counter-misinformation concepts and misinformation and pandemics, alongside quick-fire examples of approaches and issues, and lively Q&A panel sessions.
We'll be drip-feeding our full line-up of speakers, but I can reveal here high-profile speakers will include: Professor Sander Van der Linden, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, Jane Kirby (Press Association), Diya Banerjee (WHO), Alasdair Stuart (BBC Media in Action) as well as a range of speakers from LSHTM including Professor Adam Kucharski, Professor Heidi Larson, and Dr Nadine Beckmann.
Find out more and register for tickets here
This isn't the only event I've been working on in the last few months.
As part of LSHTM's counter-misinformation work I'll also be running a session at our staff conference (LSHTM Festival) at the start of July.
In my talk I'll be exploring key misinformation topics, and how the latest research can inform communications interventions.
I'll also be dropping in some of my own ideas, for example, thinking about your audience as somewhere on the spectrum of misinformation, information deserts, and where other approaches such as community interventions, technological/legal and media/digital literacy fit in.
Finally, I'll be updating on how my team's work has developed this year, from the publication of principles in January, the launch of our new explainer series in March, the July training, and September's event.
Catch-up
Missed my last newsletter? Read it here for the latest on the rise of the bots and what tools you need in your counter-misinformation toolbox.