A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.

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If you “Google” the above quote, the search results will come up with several authors such as Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Jonathan Swift even the Roman philosopher Virgil.

According to Garson O’Toole, the creator of Quote Investigator, there’s no record in any of Mark Twain’s books or correspondence that he said any such thing. There’s also no record of Winston Churchill or Jonathan Swift uttering those lines, Virgil is pretty close: “Rumour, than whom no other evil thing is faster.”

It goes to show that even a simple internet search on “who said what” can return results that aren’t true.

However, no matter who said it, we know that disinformation and lies spread more rapidly than facts.

A 2018 MIT study published in the journal Science analyzed over 100,000 stories posted on Twitter (as it was called then) between 2006 and 2017 (the study excluded bots and focused on verified users). The researchers verified/refuted the posts using such websites as snopes.com and factcheck.org.

In line with the quote, the study found that lies traveled faster and farther than the truth. 

For example, true tweets scarcely reached more than 1,000 people, whereas false tweets reached as many as 100,000 people. Lies were 70% more likely to be retweeted than real information and true tweets took six times as long than lies to reach 1,500 people.

Researchers thought that one explanation was that disinformation was posted by more popular/active Twitter users, but that was not the case. They found that the typical user who spread falsehoods tended to have limited activity on Twitter and fewer followers. 

So what was the conclusion? The MIT team found that lies are novel and exciting, and more enticing to users than the truth. We know that lies and outlandish stories trigger an emotional response: Tweets about the federal government being run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles running a child sex-trafficking operation are much more prone to triggering responses of disgust and alarm than a tweet regarding the latest U.S. jobs report.

How do we fight back against the flow of disinformation that’s an inherent part of media outlets such as Fox News, OANON, X, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram?

The answer is critical thinking. 

The U.S. Army website has some useful tips that include the following:

1. Be curious. Consider the source and verify the story. Sift out propaganda from facts. Select news sources known for high-quality, balanced investigative reporting (sorry, this does not include Fox News or Newsmax which are “news” outlets with a clear right-wing bias).

We all remember Tucker Carlson’s tenure on Fox News, where he spewed a plethora of conspiracy theories that included claims that immigration “makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided,” and that hate speech is “a made-up category designed to gut the First Amendment and shut you up.”

We’ve all been harangued with claims that the 2020 election was stolen, yet time and time again, investigation after investigation has produced no facts to verify this claim. 

2. Be reflective. If a post or new story elicits an immediate emotional response, take a minute to pause, reflect, and verify. Disinformation thrives on a strong emotional reaction.

A prime example is July 2015, when an anti-abortion group called the Center for Medical Progress, posted a series of edited, illegally recorded videos claiming to show “proof” that Planned Parenthood was unlawfully selling fetal tissue. This triggered a visceral political firestorm with GOP lawmakers and anti-abortion activists demanding Congress defund Planned Parenthood.

3. Look for robust articles that present the complexity of events and subjects in a non-biased manner. One or two paragraphs with no sources cited are not good enough. True reporting cites sources and facts that can be verified by multiple sources.

Remember MTG’s 2018 claim about Jewish space lasers that caused the California wildfires? That “story” never provided proof nor was it echoed by reputable news outlets such as MSNBC or CNN.

As the 2024 election approaches, Americans need to use critical thinking skills to fight off what will be an increase in disinformation that will no doubt target certain voting groups and fan the flames of election conspiracies and distrust in voting systems. 

Those agents of disinformation have an agenda, and it’s important to know who those agents are, and what that agenda is.