Disinformation: emergency or false problem?

“You are Fake News.” These words, uttered by former US Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump, illus­trate the extent to which the prob­lem of dis­in­form­a­tion runs through soci­ety. Des­pite his rhet­or­ic­al use of the term, dis­in­form­a­tion is con­sidered a real phe­nomen­on of con­cern to polit­ic­al author­it­ies. At worst, it can be respons­ible for mor­al pan­ic¹ where causes of cur­rent prob­lems are attrib­uted to disinformation.

Let’s remem­ber, though, that the phe­nomen­on of dis­in­form­a­tion is as old as human soci­ety. Indeed, ancient myths or the fam­ous pro­pa­ganda of the 20^th Cen­tury can be rightly con­sidered as dis­in­form­a­tion. The only rad­ic­al changes are the chan­nels of com­mu­nic­a­tion and the pos­sib­il­it­ies of dis­sem­in­a­tion. “The Inter­net has changed the way humans com­mu­nic­ate. So, there are new forms of dis­in­form­a­tion that have emerged, although dis­in­form­a­tion itself is not a new phe­nomen­on,” argues Sacha Altay, a post-doc­tor­al research­er at Oxford Uni­ver­sity and a doc­tor in exper­i­ment­al psy­cho­logy, who spe­cial­ises in issues of dis­in­form­a­tion and trust in the media.

Do these new forms of dis­in­form­a­tion deserve all the atten­tion they get? Indeed, in addi­tion to the polit­ic­al body, many sci­ent­ists have become inter­ested in the phe­nomen­on, too. Not­ably, the aim is to pre­vent dis­sem­in­a­tion of dis­in­form­a­tion or to pre­vent people from adher­ing to erro­neous inform­a­tion by devel­op­ing psy­cho­lo­gic­al tech­niques to try to counter its effect². How­ever, it remains dif­fi­cult to say if it deserves so much attention. 

In order to do so, we must first look at the defin­i­tion of dis­in­form­a­tion. There are three main defin­i­tions: the first focuses on the fac­tu­al aspect. In oth­er words, is the inform­a­tion true or false? The second focuses on the psy­cho­lo­gic­al impact: does the inform­a­tion lead to a biased view of real­ity in indi­vidu­als? Finally, the last one sug­gests focus­ing on the inform­a­tion­al expos­ure of the gen­er­al pub­lic; this defin­i­tion is broad­er and includes inform­a­tion that is fac­tu­al, but which takes the place of more import­ant information.

Cur­rently, it is estim­ated that the con­sump­tion of fake news ranges from 0.6 to 7% depend­ing on the country.

The fac­tu­al defin­i­tion has the advant­age of being simple to identi­fy and study. It allows for easy col­lec­tion of quant­it­at­ive data on the pre­val­ence of fake news, its con­sump­tion and how it cir­cu­lates. Cur­rently, it is estim­ated that the con­sump­tion of fake news in this sense var­ies between 0.6% and 7% depend­ing on the coun­try³. 

In this sense, how­ever, it is ques­tion­able wheth­er fake news is a prob­lem. For Lê Nguyên Hoang, a doc­tor of math­em­at­ics, sci­ence com­mu­nic­at­or and co-cre­at­or of the Tournesol algorithm, this is not the case. “Rad­ic­ally false inform­a­tion or inform­a­tion that alters people’s vis­ion is not the core of the prob­lem. In my opin­ion, it is more on the side of the third defin­i­tion, i.e. dis­in­form­a­tion cam­paigns organ­ised to high­light cer­tain inform­a­tion rather than oth­ers, the har­ass­ment of journ­al­ists, the cre­ation of false accounts to amp­li­fy cer­tain con­tent, the set­ting up of false debates, etc.” The research­er attests to this with a sci­entif­ic report doc­u­ment­ing the vari­ous meth­ods of digit­al and transna­tion­al repres­sion of inform­a­tion⁴.  

For Sacha Altay, the most prom­in­ent prob­lem seems to be people’s lack of interest in inform­a­tion and polit­ics in gen­er­al. “Most people and some sec­tions of the pop­u­la­tion, such as young people from work­ing-class back­grounds, do not care about dis­in­form­a­tion. They don’t fol­low news and polit­ics very much. We really must keep that in mind. One of the major object­ives is not so much to increase vigil­ance as it is to raise interest and restore trust in reli­able information.”

Fur­ther­more, a strong argu­ment to put the prob­lem of false inform­a­tion into per­spect­ive is that there is no con­sist­ent link between the con­sump­tion of art­icles, and the atti­tude of indi­vidu­als or their beha­viour. This is well known in psy­cho­logy lit­er­at­ure, and US beha­vi­our­al sci­ent­ists have stated this in black and white in a report aimed at pro­mot­ing actions to the pub­lic⁶. 

“Simply explain­ing the sci­entif­ic find­ings about cov­id-19 and the asso­ci­ated risks will very rarely lead to a change in atti­tudes and beha­viours, even if people under­stand and accept the facts, and even if they report that they should behave dif­fer­ently giv­en the new inform­a­tion,” he says. The main reas­ons why people do not adopt cer­tain beha­viours when they know they should are due to cog­nit­ive pref­er­ences for old habits, for­get­ful­ness, small incon­veni­ences in the present moment, pref­er­ences for what requires the least effort, and motiv­ated reasoning.

Yet, ulti­mately, this is what the polit­ic­al body wants to do, as is the case with crit­ic­al think­ing edu­ca­tion: reduce false beliefs, improve safety, pro­mote pub­lic health, etc. Tack­ling dis­in­form­a­tion might there­fore be a red her­ring, as we do not always con­sume inform­a­tion to sat­is­fy epi­stem­ic goals. Sacha Altay gives us a con­crete example to illus­trate this point, “in the US, people who con­sume pro-Trump inform­a­tion are pro-Trump. The art­icles serve more to jus­ti­fy a kind of atti­tude they already had towards their polit­ic­al views than fac­tu­al accuracy.” 

The research­er relies mainly on a 2016 study⁷ that took place dur­ing the US pres­id­en­tial cam­paign, which shows that few people con­sume fake news out of a spir­it of con­tra­dic­tion, in oth­er words to try to sort out what is true from what is false, but rather to rein­force their worldview. 

Lê Nguyên Hoang also argues that we should stop focus­ing on dis­in­form­a­tion but sug­gests that the argu­ment of incon­sist­ent links between beliefs, atti­tudes and beha­viours is con­tex­tu­al. “If we con­sider the status quo – that most people’s beha­viour is good – then this argu­ment is rel­ev­ant. But if you look at an issue like cli­mate change, inac­tion is dan­ger­ous. The fact that the sub­ject is not suf­fi­ciently covered in the media can, in my opin­ion, be con­sidered a form of disinformation.”

What the research­er describes here is the prob­lem of mute news. This is a per­ni­cious form of dis­in­form­a­tion that con­sists of obscur­ing a key issue from media atten­tion that often under­lies the con­cerns of the pub­lic and polit­ic­al bodies. 

Sacha Atlay qual­i­fies the point, “on the sub­ject of cli­mate, it seems that it is the social media agenda of polit­ic­al parties that has become a pre­dict­or of the pres­ence of this sub­ject in the news.” Echo­ing mute news, the research­er men­tions anoth­er tech­nique often used: flood­ing. “This con­sists of flood­ing the inform­a­tion space with unre­li­able inform­a­tion in order to increase uncer­tainty and reduce con­fid­ence in reli­able inform­a­tion”, explains Sacha Altay. 

Indeed, cli­mate issues seem to be increas­ingly covered by the media, as recent stud­ies show⁸, although this depends on the coun­try. For example, in Rus­sia, the country’s cli­mate policy is nev­er ques­tioned by the offi­cial news­pa­pers⁹. In West­ern coun­tries, the cli­mate prob­lem is often dis­cussed at the level of com­mu­nic­a­tion; some groups doing so are spe­cial­ised in flood­ing and are among the main pro­du­cers of often mis­lead­ing inform­a­tion¹⁰ on cli­mate, ahead of sci­entif­ic insti­tu­tions or reli­able media. 

In con­clu­sion, des­pite the ini­tial oppos­i­tion, both research­ers seem to agree on the import­ance of increas­ing people’s interest in reli­able inform­a­tion, which gen­er­ally involves trust in the media. And even if, in the cur­rent con­text, our inform­a­tion eco­sys­tems are colossal, high­light­ing the issues around dis­in­form­a­tion is neces­sary for the well-being of soci­ety as a whole.

Julien Hernandez