Accepting the evidence

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Most of us have grown up in democracies, and therefore, we’re used to living in a democracy. However, perhaps we have forgotten that democracies work well because citizens engage in reasoned, evidence-based debate to make decisions about our societies' future. That's what democracies are about. They aren’t just about voting but also about having a constructive deliberation about how to solve problems.

At the core of this process is the acceptance of evidence. Some things are true, and others are not supported by evidence. We have a responsibility to navigate this landscape while having constructive debates. However, misinformation is undermining that process.

Misinformation has always been around. I'm old enough to remember the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003. Although they didn't exist, as we now know, they were conjured up by governments to go to war and invade Iraq. So, misinformation has always been problematic.

Yet, not all misinformation is equal. I would argue that there has been a shift over the last five to ten years. Misinformation no longer attempts to convince us of a reality that might be false, but, instead, tries to alter the state of reality, shifting it toward something completely different. For example, weapons of mass destruction, climate denial, all these misinformation attacks dealt with reality while trying to convince us that something is true when, in fact, it wasn't.

Moving beyond reality

More recently, in the post-truth world that we live in, misinformation isn't even intended to make us believe anything. If you look at Donald Trump's record, he utters something like 10 to 20 false statements per day. According to fact-checkers, that's about 20,000 misleading statements since he became president. Does he want us to believe 20,000 things that aren't true? I don't think that is the purpose of misinformation spouted by Donald Trump or other populist politicians worldwide. Instead, I think that misinformation is trying to undermine our faith and belief in the possibility of agreeing on facts.

That's a radical shift from pretending to care about reality. We’ve moved beyond weapons of mass destruction to now abandoning the notion of a shared reality altogether and replacing it with things like "alternative facts." One of Donald Trump's advisers famously referred to alternative facts following his inauguration. She disputed the undeniable fact that fewer people attended Donald Trump's inauguration than Barack Obama's four years prior.

The moment you abandon the notion of a shared reality, you're undermining democratic discourse. You're undermining democracy. If you say, ‘Oh, I have my own set of facts,’ then no communication is possible. There cannot be a debate if some people make stuff up and then present that invention as an alternative fact. We must share beliefs and accept the rules by which we arrive at decisions supported by evidence.

The real problem with misinformation isn't just what it does to democracy. Even more problematic, it resembles the German and Italian regimes of the 1930s. These fascist states shared this view of truth as something not subject to evidence but rather subject to a feeling supported by intuition. A leader then articulates that feeling. This approach to truth was the defining attribute of fascism, and we know what that did to the world. I don't think anybody can argue that it was a positive outcome.

Overall, we're now encountering a very similar view of truth. Truth has become something based on intuition and faith vis-a-vis alternative facts. It is no longer supported by evidence. This 1930s approach to the truth is making a comeback now, and I think it is potentially dangerous. This comparison goes beyond merely describing attitudes towards truth. There are other frightening similarities, as well.

Seeing through alternative facts

So, how do we deal with that? What can we do about it? Fortunately, recent research has shown that acceptance of such blatant lies and misstatements is limited to specific circumstances. People only accept demagogues when they feel left behind or excluded from a political system; when they think that society is corrupt or otherwise not serving their interests; when they're feeling threatened by outsiders or that others imperil their privileges. People accept demagogues because they want to express their opposition to the establishment.

That is crucial to understand in today's political climate. Falsehoods by politicians are sending a signal. They are signalling contempt for the establishment. These politicians don't want us to believe anything in particular; they want us to know that they can lie with impunity and undermine democratic discourse.

A political response is required to break this pattern. Better communication, like better bumper stickers, do not resolve these issues. Instead, what’s needed is political change. Moreover, the political change required now is to ensure that people don't feel left behind or excluded from society. We've got to provide opportunities for people who are not highly-educated but are still entitled to a dignified life with a good income and a good job. We have to look after those people so that they do not become susceptible to demagogues. I believe that is the critical challenge for the future to leave this post-truth world.

Populism and nationalism worldwide

Populism and nationalism are resurgent in many parts of the world. For example, in Brazil, we have a populist politician who acts like Donald Trump. In India, we have a government that, as far as I can tell, is retreating from democracy and becoming increasingly nationalistic and ethnocentric. Therefore, this points to a global problem.

Nevertheless, I’d guess that if the West were to show moral and political leadership in dealing with this problem, it would make it more difficult for other leaders to follow the same path. When Donald Trump acts the way he does, he is not a good role model for the rest of the world. Therefore, it's difficult for us to expect African, Asian, or South American countries to be model nations when the Western world's leading government is acting so poorly. To solve this problem, the West must step up to its leadership role. At the moment, we're not playing that role well.

Proper discourse in a democracy

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One of the reasons I'm optimistic about our chances to invigorate democracy and not fall into the populist trap is because we know that citizens can deliberate and come to reasoned decisions. All we have to do is to provide them with the space and the time to do that. Take, for example, the Republic of Ireland: they have had several recent referenda on emotional, hot-button issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Yet, the country managed to do so without polarisation and without creating a Brexit-like mess.

Ireland was able to navigate these challenging issues because they had deliberative assemblies for discussing the underlying issues of those referenda beforehand. A deliberative assembly is a collection of randomly chosen citizens. In Ireland’s case, the assembly was made up of 99 randomly representative citizens from across the country. These individuals gathered one weekend a month for a year to discuss the issues surrounding abortion and gay marriage. They were moderated by a respected Supreme Court justice and were privy to expert input. People do exciting things and reach exciting conclusions when they are encouraged to deliberate upon important issues and are guided by expert knowledge and moderators.

This is the complete opposite of what is happening right now on social media. There, people are tweeting at each other, and misinformation is popping up all over the place. It's all just one big, noisy mess. If we create the space to have deliberation, people will deliberate, and they will yield results that are informative for the rest of the country. Therefore, I think this type of framework can help us out of our current mess.

When politicians lie

Moreover, we can go beyond that. We can look around the world, and we can understand how people respond to misinformation from politicians in different societies. Along those lines, my colleagues and I recently compared the United States to Australia. In both cases, we presented participants with false statements by politicians, which were then corrected. We then asked, ‘How did that change your belief, and how did it change your attitudes about the politician?’ In the United States, we found that people were responsive to corrections and adjusted their beliefs about the claims made by their favourite politician. However, changing their faith had either no effect or only a minimal effect on their attitudes towards the politician and their voting intentions.

On the other hand, we observed something very different in Australia. Similarly to the United States, people also adjusted their beliefs in response to corrections. Additionally, when they learned that politicians misrepresented facts, many Australian participants reduced their faith in the politician and indicated that they would not like to vote for them. Thus, there was a connection between factual accuracy and their voting intentions.

Although we can't be sure, several reasons may explain this difference. If you look at the countries’ electoral systems, there are striking differences between the two. In Australia, for example, voting is mandatory. You get fined if you don't vote there. That's completely different from the US, where voter turnout is something politicians manipulate all the time — one party benefits from increasing voter turnout while the other benefits from decreasing voter turnout. If voting were mandatory, that would not be the case.

Furthermore, voting in Australia is preferential. Citizens rank order the parties from most preferred to least preferred. This rank ordering matters, so the parties talk to each other and negotiate what they should tell their followers about how to rank the other parties. Consequently, there is pressure against extremism in the Australian system because the parties must work together, whereas there isn't the same pressure in the United States.

To me, that's a fascinating point because it tells us that the problems we're having are not inevitable. They can be fixed without censorship, without revolution and without large-scale upheaval by merely looking at the structure of elections and how society makes decisions. As such, I believe there is a lot of knowledge out there that we can harness moving forward to ensure that we're not retreating from democracy.

Do digital natives navigate or succumb to misinformation?

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Interestingly, several recent studies in the United States have clearly shown that a select few people are responsible for most of the misinformation that is circulating online. Moreover, age is significant in determining who super-spreaders are. Older people, by and large, spread more misinformation than younger people. As I recall, one study showed that older people were six times more likely to spread false information than their younger counterparts. Several studies have demonstrated that, which is a robust finding. This is encouraging because it means that the younger people, who will run society in the future, are less susceptible to sharing false information.

That said, we don't know why that is yet. It may be that older people cannot learn to differentiate false from true information, or it may be that they share incorrect information for other reasons, for example, for social reasons. We don't know that, but we know that younger people are less susceptible to sharing misinformation, which is positive.

However, everything comes with a footnote. We also know that young people — adolescents, in particular — are routinely exposed to hate speech online, to a frightening extent. There are some studies in Germany and Finland where about 30 or 40% of adolescents were found to have been exposed to extremist hate speech online, sometimes routinely. We don't know what effect that has, but it is a severe problem that we must address.

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Populism and political behaviour

Lewandowsky, S., Smillie, L., Garcia, D., et al. (2020). Technology and Democracy: Understanding the influence of online technologies on political behaviour and decision-making. Publications Office of the European Union. EUR 30422 EN.

Aird, M.J., Ecker, U., Lewandowsky, S., et al. (2018). Does truth matter to voters? The effects of correcting political misinformation in an Australian sample. Royal Society Open Science, 5.

How alternative facts are undermining democracy