A new poll shows a lack of consensus on disinformation solutions
Who should be responsible for curbing the spread of
disinformation?
We might start by looking at who is responsible for spreading
it. Those of us who follow this topic closely know there are a number of
answers to that question: nefarious foreign actors, irresponsible platforms,
zealous partisans, politicians who lie with impunity, people who stand to make
a buck off of misinformation and social media users who get duped into passing
along falsehoods.
That lack of a single source also explains why it is so hard to
identify a solution. There’s not just one place to look.
Now a new poll on disinformation reflects the difficulty people
have in assigning responsibility for addressing the problem. NPR, PBS NewsHour
and the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion reported
this week that a poll they conducted this month showed little consensus
when it asked people to choose who should have the “main responsibility” for
addressing the question: 39% pointed to the media, 18% to technology companies,
15% to the government and 12% to the public.
This is the second poll in a year in which the largest share of
respondents said the media should have the primary responsibility for reducing
the flow of misinformation. In a Pew
Research Center survey conducted in early 2019, 53% of respondents said
journalists have the most responsibility to fix the problem.
In the new poll, it’s worth noting the partisan breakdown of
respondents who said the media holds the main responsibility. As NPR’s Brett
Neely notes, it is probably not surprising that 54% of Republicans said
stopping the spread of disinformation is mainly the media’s responsibility,
given President Donald Trump’s repeated claim that the media traffics in “fake
news.” In contrast, 29% of Democrats put the main onus on the media.
There is also the question of whether it is realistic to ask
people to assign the main responsibility for stopping the flow of
disinformation to one entity, since the problem almost certainly needs a
multi-faceted solution. To address politicians who lie, the solution may be
more fact-checking to hold them accountable. Platforms that turn a blind eye to
dangerous misinformation may need more regulation. To help users spread less
false information, we might need more news
literacy programs.
At least people are aware that the problem is a difficult one.
In the new poll, 59% of respondents reported that it is hard to tell the
difference between factual and misleading information. That recognition could
be an important step in getting more accountability – regardless of who people
see as “mainly” responsible.
. . . technology
- A collaborative project between The New York Times and IBM has been working to see whether blockchain technology can make it easier for news consumers to understand the provenance of online photos.
- The upshot, wrote
Hanaa’ Tameez for NiemanLab, was that “they determined that a lot of
things would have to change structurally about how photos work online for
any solution to be widespread.”
- Misinformation has been rampant in China since the confirmation of a new pneumonia-causing coronavirus. “A post circulating on the popular messaging app WeChat suggested that cities where patients had fallen sick should set off fireworks to kill the disease in the air,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
- The IFCN and fact-checkers from Taiwan are having a hard time obtaining information about eight people who were arrested in the city of Wuhan earlier this month for allegedly spreading false news regarding the virus. The group was taken into custody by police forces before it became clear that the region was actually seeing an outbreak of a new fatal flu. International media hasn’t covered the case.
. . . politics
- Judd Legum’s Popular Information reported that Facebook “is allowing a major pro-Trump super PAC, the Committee to Defend the President, to run ads with lies.” This is contrary to its policy that political action committees and advocacy groups are subject to fact-checking even though politicians and parties are not.
- “Over the last few months, the PAC has repeatedly used
Facebook to advertise false claims,” Legum wrote.
- Reuters, meanwhile, has put together a helpful rundown of how each of the big platforms handles false or misleading claims in political ads.
. . . the future of news
- More than 500 people from 88 countries have applied to Global Fact 7, which means the next edition of the International Fact-Checking Network’s annual summit will be the largest and the most diverse in its history.
- This year's event, scheduled to take place in Oslo from June 24-27, will have five tracks. One will be dedicated to editorial issues. A second will focus on media literacy and training. The third will host developers and tech enthusiasts. The fourth track will be for executives, and the last one for academics. Those who are interested in presenting papers or research should submit abstracts to Oslo Metropolitan University. Applications will be open until Feb. 14.
Mexican fact-checkers from Animal Politico usually deal with false information regarding immigrants on the country’s northern border with the United States. This week, they caught Mexican officials, including President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in a number of falsehoods involving the way Mexican National Guard troops treated migrants on the southern border.
Over the weekend, violence
broke out when a group of about 2,000 immigrants from Honduras arrived at
the border between Mexico and Guatemala at the Suchiate River, in an attempt to
get to the United States. Following López Obrador’s strict orders, the troops
stopped the migrants from getting into Mexico.
In an interview Tuesday, López Obrador said that “no human
rights had been or would be ever violated” in the region. But fact-checkers
from Animal Politico displayed a collection
of images showing the opposite.
In a series of photos taken by AFP and the photo agency
Cuartoscuro, fact-checkers showed how the Mexican border patrol ran after and
jumped on people who tried to cross the river. In some images, it is clear that
the troops are not offering the protection that the president mentioned in his
interview.
The Mexican government said that no one was injured in the
southern border and there “was nothing to be sorry about.” The Red Cross in
Guatemala, however, told Animal Politico that seven people were hurt during the
conflict.
What we liked: Animal Politico curated photos from different sources to show
its audience what actually happened in a region that is not easily accessed by
regular citizens. The fact that they also searched for information in Guatemala
is a plus.
1. An Ohio pediatrician who used TikTok to
encourage people to get vaccinated was the victim of a
smear campaign by the anti-vaccination movement.
2. A journalist and free-speech advocate in
Southeast Asia argued in
a New York Times op-ed that Singapore’s anti-fake news law is being used to
quiet dissent.
3. Former Vice President Joe Biden sent an open
memo to the media warning
it to avoid spreading disinformation pushed by Trump and his allies.
4. Algorithms are directing ads by American
brands like Geico Insurance onto Russian disinformation sites, NewsGuard
co-founder Gordon Crovitz wrote in a New
York Times op-ed.
5. Relatedly, some of the world’s biggest
companies are funding
climate misinformation by advertising on YouTube,
according to a study
from the activist group Avaaz.
6. Fast Company interviewed
Stanford misinformation researcher Renée DiResta about misinformation
trends heading into the 2020 election.
7. The Washington Post has
updated its database of Trump falsehoods. He has made 16,241 false or
misleading claims in his first three years in office.
8. USA Today is seeking one-year
reporting fellows to join its politics team as part of a fact-check
program.
9. In the days before the holiday
celebrating his life, conspiracies about Martin Luther King Jr.’s death spread
on social media. Daniel traced
and debunked them for PolitiFact.
10. The Tampa Bay Times debunked
a Facebook rumor about sex traffickers purportedly luring motorists by lying
down in roads.
Daniel, Susan and Cristina
