What is it?
In the wake of Trump’s legacy of misinformation, distrust and fake news, widespread disbelief in conventional politics and scientific evidence is now the norm. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to declare what is “true”, and what isn’t. Fake news has affected elections, referendums, and our response to the pandemic. It continues to polarise people around the world. Enter the era of post-truth.
Post-truth (2016’s Word of the Year) can be defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Instead of looking to authority figures and journalistic institutions for answers and fact, we’re turning to alternative belief systems and online sources for comfort, reassurance and validation. According to the 2021 Ipsos Veracity Index, more people trust the ‘ordinary person in the street’ (58%), than they do charity chief executives (41%).
In the past, those who gathered around niche interests, theories or beliefs might have existed on the fringes. Now, “alternative” interests and beliefs like UFO skyscanning, anarchist-communism, life extension and birth-chart readings have filtered into the mainstream. Even cryptocurrency has been taken over by astrological predictions of market spikes and falls.
The rise of “influencers” combined with algorithmic funnelling has meant that opinions shared online can potentially carry potent and real influence - no matter how ill-informed, bizarre or incorrect. Case in point - just 12 people are responsible for the bulk of the misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines that proliferate on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Add to this advances in AI that have made the software required to created deep fakes accessible on a standard smart device, and suddenly you haveDonald Trump appearing in an episode of Better Call Saul, Salvador Dali returning from the grave, or more worryingly, Ali Bongo, President of Gabon, New Year address that possibly played a role in provoking an attempted military coup.
“If you can make it trend, you can make it true.”
Tristan Harris, Former Design Ethicist at Google
Why should I care?
The coronavirus pandemic has created a perfect petri dish for misinformation and false narratives to run wild. Some have labelled it a ‘misinfodemic’ - the process by which sharing misinformation halts efforts to stop the spread of a pandemic by causing confusion, mistrust, and disobedience.
However, individuals, businesses and collectives have ramped up their efforts to combat misinformation. There’s an obvious and necessary role for the third sector to leverage it’s expert knowledge to fight misinformation and ‘fake news’. But there’s also opportunity to use this fight to create new income generating offers and engage your supporter base in different ways.
We’ve created a one-stop guide to help you and your organisation navigate ‘post-truth’ - who’s spreading misinformation, who’s taking a stand, and a handy workshop pack to help you get involved and consider new opportunities for supporter engagement, income generation and innovation.
“A study published in Nature last month showed that misinformation had a significant effect on vaccine uptake. The number of Brits who said they would “definitely” accept the vaccine dropped by 6.2 percentage points after they were exposed to common conspiracies—that Bill Gates was plotting against his fellow-Americans, for instance.”
Anna Russell - The Fight Against Vaccine Misinformation
Who’s spreading misinformation?
The charity sector is no stranger to fake news, misinformation and out right trolling. From Nigel Farage's false claims about the RNLI, to the endless trolling of cancer charities on social media claiming they are 'hiding the cure'. (My personal favourite is the website that catalogues all the things the Daily Mail have said cause or cure (or both) cancer).
Elsewhere, Fox News continues to face criticism and outrage after spreading misinformation during the pandemic. “Media Matters found that between June 28 through July 11, "Fox News aired 129 segments about coronavirus vaccines. Of those, 57% included claims that either undermined or downplayed immunization efforts.”
‘Aestheticised Activism’ is the Instagram trend of condensing complex social issues and world conflicts into hyper-basic bullet points against the backdrop of a pastel background. As sociologist Eve Ewing says, “graphics like this can be a helpful teaching tool, but some of the ‘racial justice explainer’ posts that go viral grossly oversimplify complex ideas in harmful or misleading ways or flat-out misstate facts”
On his ITV Morning show, Eamonn Holmes said the media should not disregard claims that coronavirus was impacted by 5G connectivity.
Claims that Facebook supercharged the #StoptheSteal campaign that spread misinformation surrounding the result of the US election.
When Parler launched in 2018 as a new social media network, a wave of right-wing politicians flock to it for its purported focus on “free speech” and commitment to fighting against ‘deplatforming’. However, many on the left claimed that they were removed from the network for sharing views that the moderators found disagreeable.
What are the major players doing?
Reddit uses its own community and administrators as a way to moderate posts on the platform and tackle the spread of misinformation, with users able to ‘downvote’ posts. This differs from the centralised approach of Facebook and Twitter, though Facebook has started to trial this functionality in small user tests. Reddit also has specific community boards aimed at helping people climb out of the ‘rabbit hole’ of misinformation, such as QAnonCasualties and ReQovery
WhatsApp has changed the way users are able to forward messages in an effort to stop the spread of misinformation. They also partnered with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to inform people about coronavirus and stop the spread of misinformation
Microsoft has developed a tool to combat ‘deepfake technology’ - technology that replaces one person’s likeness with another. “Microsoft's Video Authenticator tool works by trying to detect giveaway signs that an image has been artificially generated, which might be invisible to the human eye.”
In 2020 The Guardian published a comprehensive list of all the notable measures that large social media corporations took to combat the spread of misinformation, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
Who can I trust?
Novara Media - an independent media platform that aims to share journalism which encourages positive political action.
Gal-dem - ”an award winning media company committed to sharing the perspectives of people of colour from marginalised genders”. Features include a ‘Bad Politicians’ series, raising awareness of the worst things that people in key positions in government have said
‘The Young Turks’ - a progressive online news show that generates “over 250 million views a month”. It aims to speak truth to power and share news from a young, progressive standpoint
Tortoise - Founded in 2019 by James Harding, the former Times editor and BBC News Director, Tortoise is a membership-based title that specialises in what it calls ‘slow news’. It publishes long-form articles by some of the best journalists writing today, offering deep explorations of social, political and scientific issues.
Byline Times - Founded by Peter Jukes and Stephen Colegrave, aims to “produce fearless journalism not found in the mainstream media.” They concentrate on ‘what the papers don’t say’. “Accurate information is the lifeblood of a democracy and, although everyone is welcome to their own opinions, facts cannot be debated”.
Who else is trying to take action?
Finland, who have long been the target of rumour and misinformation, is starting young, taking the fight against fake news to primary schools and leading the in misinformation education.
The Citizens (who include GI’s own Clara Maguire as part of their collective) use impact journalism to hold government and big tech to account. Founded in the midst of the pandemic, they’ve brought together leading scientists to create a shadow accountability body to challenge the UK government’s response to COVID-19, investigating the awarding of multi-million pound contracts to political donors and creating an open source database to put the information into the public domain.
Sense about Science is an independent charity that “promotes the public interest in sound science and evidence”, raising awareness of scientific claims based on poor or inaccurate evidence.
DeSmog - a global media platform aimed at sharing fact-based information about climate change and stopping the proliferation of misinformation about the emergency the planet faces.
NewsGuard is a ratings system that employs journalists to score websites based on their transparency and reliability.
Who are the innovators?
‘Astroscreen’ - a new company that employs technology to actively search out bots sharing misinformation and report them to the individuals or companies that might be affected.
Founded by comedian/entrepreneur Nathan Fielder, ‘Summit Ice’ is an outdoor apparel brand that is committed to addressing Holocaust denial by sharing the truth about the Holocaust. All profits from the brand go to the Holocaust Education Centre, Vancouver.
‘Filter vs Reality’ - a new Instagram filter that highlights the difference between how people present themselves online and how they actually look in real life. ‘Filter vs Reality’ creator Faye Dickinson launched the filter in 2021 to raise awareness of the impact that filters can have on users’ mental health.
Bywire News is the first blockchain news network. It publishes its content, not just the timestamp and/or hash of the content, directly to the blockchain. All content is time and author stamped for authenticity and accountability. This means each article contains a record on the blockchain detailing when it was created, by whom, and any revisions which are made and when. Their goal is to use the power of the blockchain to “usher in a new generation of content authorship which is attributable, verified, and trustworthy. We are helping to end fake news forever”.
Act now
1. INNOVATE - Leverage your expertise:
You are the experts in your cause, your mission. You are the voice of your beneficiaries, members and service users. Leverage this expertise to innovate. We’ve created a workshop toolkit, complete with session plan, templates and stimulus, to help you innovate around: income generation, supporter engagement and impact.
Click here to download the toolkit.
2. EXPLORE - Different narratives for different audiences:
When combating misinformation we must find and tell stories of impact and change in ways that will make sense and appeal to different audiences - from the person scrolling on TikTok to the policy maker in Downing Street. How can you explore different channels, narratives and types of evidence to engage in dialogue? What's the opportunity to engage the most controversial voices to gather insight?
3. CHALLENGE - Building Trust:
Challenging fake news and misinformation isn’t just about presenting people with the facts. It’s about building trust. Your first response to misinformation might be to try and tackle or conquer the false facts. But according to Robert Matney, "responding to fake news may actually harm your brand. “Much of our lives is a matter of opinion over fact. Human behaviour is driven by belief – consumers buy based on what they perceive to be true. Inserting truth in the face of misinformation may in fact spread visibility of the thing you are trying to correct."
Instead, how can you leverage the trust people already have in your brand, your mission and your impact to position yourself as a trusted voice? How and where can you join forces with others to amplify your voice and your expertise?