Disinformation is a real threat to democracy and public health

Written by Stefan Lewandowski and Sander van der Linden & Andy Norman

Disinformation is the coin of the modern realm. Vaccine denial, climate change denial, election denial, war crimes denial, along with grotesque Holocaust denial, join the ranks of injustices now regularly foisted on citizens. However, we can do something about cancer in this information age.

In January, the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked the spread of misinformation as the greatest threat to humanity in a report. Global Risk Report. With more than 4 billion people (almost half of the world's population) voting in the upcoming 2024 elections, the report makes clear that now is the time to prepare the world for disinformation and those who spread it. .

Some commentators dismissed the report's conclusions as another attempt to censor free speech. But this is dishonest. Those who oppose the study of misinformation, whether they are experts, politicians, or cranks, are not fighting for freedom, but against an enlightened and informed public. We are fighting against them.

We know that public beliefs only partially correspond to facts. For example, virtually all Americans know that Belgium did not invade Germany to start World War I. But one in five young Americans believes the Holocaust is a hoax. Years after the Iraq War, 42 percent of the population incorrectly believed that weapons of mass destruction existed. More than 1 in 3 of them incorrectly believe that the risks of the coronavirus vaccine outweigh its benefits.

Someone lied to these people. The difference between legitimate public beliefs and false beliefs is that disinformation is typically spread by political actors on social media or through other channels.

Immediately after the WEF report was released, critic Nate Silver declared the approximately 1,500 professional consultants “idiots,” and Elon Musk used the report to Blame The very concept of misinformation being a conspiratorial conspiracy. They reiterated key talking points that are increasingly being used to downplay the urgency of the misinformation crisis, including the mistaken notion that the label “misinformation” is subjective, vague, and biased. Ta. Philosopher Lee MacIntyre has described this effort as hijacking postmodern principles to advance the war on truth.

The role of disinformation is particularly evident in the case of coronavirus vaccines. While then-President Donald Trump initially claimed credit for the vaccine's rapid development and deployment, the vaccine quickly became politically polarizing, with Republican politicians and conservative networks regularly tossing it out of confidence. I tried to hurt my sexuality. One study links frequent false statements about coronavirus vaccines on Fox News to lower vaccination rates among viewers. Another study found that people who strongly support Trump are less likely to get vaccinated than others, including Republicans who do not strongly support Trump. A tragic downstream consequence of coronavirus disinformation is therefore a widening of the partisan gap in excess mortality. Before the pandemic, Republican and Democratic registered voters had similar death rates, but after vaccines became widely available, Republican excess death rates were up to 43% higher than Democratic voters. The gap was largest in counties with the lowest percentage of vaccinated people and nearly disappeared in counties with the highest percentage of people vaccinated.

Given that Republicans are the main victims of vaccine disinformation in the U.S., a Republican congressman from Ohio has launched a campaign against a study that seeks to protect the public from the worst sellers of disinformation. It's ironic being Jim Jordan. His campaign is based in part on online conspiracy theories, including one suggesting that researchers colluded with the Department of Homeland Security to censor 22 million tweets during the 2020 election. . In fact, the researchers collected these tweets for analysis and only flagged about 3,000 of them (about 0.01%) as potentially violating his Twitter terms of service. Jordan's campaign has had a chilling effect on the research community, and his attacks coincide with moves by major platforms such as Meta, Google, Twitter and Amazon to cut staff dedicated to combating hate speech and misinformation. However, this does not bode well. This year, 4 billion people will take last-minute action as they prepare to vote.

Mr. Jordan is campaigning on the banner of freedom of speech. Indeed, there is bipartisan support among Americans to remove false online content, including clear-cut issues such as Holocaust denial, but it is difficult to clearly classify information as true or false. In some cases. But the solution is not to sue, harass, or censor researchers of misinformation.

On the contrary, misinformation researchers have identified new ways to make people less susceptible to misinformation without risking censorship or interference with free speech. One method is known as “inoculation,” which increases people's ability to discern information. The key to inoculation or “pre-misinformation” is the recognition that misleading or false information has markers that help distinguish it from high-quality information. The ancient Greeks already knew how to distinguish between good and bad arguments. And he makes no mistake, 2,000 years later, that inconsistency, cherry-picking, and scapegoating are still markers of low-quality information.

In fact, numerous studies conducted with millions of people on social media have shown that vaccinations in the form of short informational videos are commonly associated with misinformation, including false dilemmas and scapegoating. It has been shown to increase the ability to identify manipulation techniques.

There is a lot of misinformation out there, and it can cost lives. Fortunately, it can often be clearly identified.

This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the author. scientific american.