As a boomer, I grew up watching such iconic newscasters as Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, David Brinkley, and Barbara Walters. Such talking heads prided themselves on bringing us the facts on events both domestic and international. There was no such thing as X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, YouTube, TikTock or podcasts. Our news came from the TV, radio, or the newspaper the kid next door threw on our front lawn every morning while riding his banana-seat bike around the neighborhood.
Things have changed since the birth of the internet and the rise of social media, and one of the casualties of this change is the rise of disinformation on a global scale.
The Oxford Dictionary defines information as “facts provided or learned about something or someone.” The key word here is “facts.”
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), misinformation is defined as false or inaccurate information, whereas, disinformation is false information that is deliberately intended to mislead, or intentionally misstate the facts.
When I first joined Facebook back in 2021, the majority of posts were “Here’s a picture of a cake I baked,” or “Here’s my family and our Golden Retriever camping in the Rockies.” I don’t have any recollection of posts resembling outrageous conspiracy theories such as Jewish space lasers, Bill Gates putting microchips in vaccines, pizzagate, or Hollywood elites (who happen to be Democrats) drinking the blood of children.
What happened to social media? How did we go from pictures of chocolate cakes and cute puppies to deliberate claims that the pandemic was a hoax, ANTIFA stormed the Capital on January 6th, and the 2020 election was stolen? And secondly, why do some Americans believe in such things that don’t come close to anything factual? I mean, Jewish space lasers?
The answers might come from the fact that as humans we’re emotional, tribal, stubborn, and naturally drawn to the outrageous.
For example, social media platforms learned early on that the more outrageous the post, the more views, likes and shares it will get. That means spending more time on that platform, which in turn allows for more time viewing ads for anything from Viagra to Gucci purses. Social media giants such as FaceBook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X all use algorithms to build on disinformation directed to elicit an emotional response because that’s what keeps people engaged, more likely to share, and more likely to buy something.
Looking at human psychology, the APA has found that people are more likely to share disinformation when it aligns with personal identity or social norms, when it is novel, and when it elicits strong emotions. This is quite obvious in American politics today.
The APA has stated that people are more likely to believe misinformation if it comes from in-group sources (people like them), and are more likely to believe false statements (like a stolen election) that elicit emotions of fear and outrage. Also, people are more likely to believe in claims that paint opponents in a negative light (Republicans as patriots vs. Democrats as child-trafficking communists), and are more likely to believe repeated information, even in the face of contradictory facts.
A 2023 Texas A&M study found that disinformation has (and is) playing a big part in American politics. The study found that 23% of Facebook image posts they examined contained falsehoods that were unequally distributed along partisan lines. While only 5% of left-leaning posts contained misinformation, 39% of right-leaning posts did. The same study found that on the eve of the 2020 election, nearly one out of every four political image posts on Facebook contained widely shared untruths about the BLM movement, QAnon conspiracy theories, and unfounded claims about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Conspiracy theories, lies, and falsehoods have been around for millennia, and are nothing new, especially in politics. However, the unique thing today is that disinformation can spread like wildfire on social media platforms and reach millions in seconds.
There lies the danger to the very fabric of our Democracy: One outrageous post about a candidate the night before an election could swing voters, discourage certain groups from voting, and even elicit a violent response from certain segments of our society.
Walter Cronkite and other iconic newscasters have long since passed, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t learn to recognize the signs and symptoms of disinformation, and more importantly, how to combat it.