Misinformation can be murder

Photo by Ayush Chopra Delhi

We can think about the damaging consequences of misinformation and fake news both in terms of the individual and society at large.

Starting with the individual, we've seen awful things happening in the world. In India, there have been mass mob lynchings going on for years now because of false rumours and misinformation spread on WhatsApp. For example, a community might receive a false message that some kidnappers are in the area and that a child has been kidnapped, with false photos and a specific location data. Mobs will go out and attack people violently in a kind of vigilante retribution. At the end of the day, they're acting on this false information, which appears to come from a trusted source within their social network.

COVID conspiracies

In our own research we've found that people's endorsement of coronavirus conspiracy theories and misinformation is an important predictor of their willingness to adopt public health measures. It predicted reduced willingness to get a vaccine once one is out there, and a reduced willingness to recommend the vaccine to other people. So misinformation in this space can be harmful because it can actually create vaccine hesitancy, which, as we know from prior issues, can actually compromise herd immunity, which is a massive danger to public health.

Then there are more subtle effects of fake news forming harmful stereotypes about other groups of people. For example, if you read a conspiracy theory about a group of people — typically a minority— you might start forming harmful stereotypes about that group. And we've heard things like “Chinese virus” being used as a way to manipulate people into forming negative feelings towards another group of people because they know that's where the coronavirus originated. So there is this harmful end product of misinformation that permeates different levels throughout the chain, whether it's direct effects on your health or indirect effects on your thoughts and beliefs.

Manipulating voter behaviour

Voter behaviour is actually quite complex. People vote for a variety of reasons, not just because of misinformation. But certainly it might be the case that people's belief in fake news contributes to the way they feel about a political candidate and the reasons why they voted.

This is where targeted fake news comes in. Voters who are undecided can be targeted on Facebook with fake news. The way this works is that you typically have a group of people on Facebook that are spreading or are susceptible to a certain kind of misinformation. Then you can ask Facebook for what is called a “lookalike audience”. These are people with the same characteristics on Facebook as the group that you've spotted, but who haven't yet been exposed to the content. They might be susceptible because they share characteristics with these other groups. Then you can target them with your ads. Research shows that people click on ads when you target them.

Ultimately what people end up doing at the voting booth is another question, but you can certainly see that it can be used for sinister and harmful purposes. It's not always to dupe people with the fake news itself. Sometimes it's just about voter suppression: disengaging people from politics and getting them to stay home. Sometimes it's just to create doubt in people's minds and inflame debates. Ultimately, I think the most damaging consequence on the societal level is the erosion of trust in media, government and official institutions. Because when people no longer have trust, that's really starting to get at the fabric of democracy.

Climate fact vs. climate fiction

Misinformation about climate change is an existential risk. When people are misled on that issue, it could have huge consequences for the future of the planet. So even though we're not talking about people dying from misinformation at the moment, in some ways, misinformation about climate change is actually one of the most dangerous kinds because it interferes with people's ability to correctly understand how we need to navigate the planet to try to preserve it.

There's a petition out there. It's a real website and it says: 30,000 scientists have signed this petition saying global warming isn't happening. What we found was that just exposing people to that website can have damaging consequences for people's perception of whether the science is settled on the issue of climate change and whether or not it's happening. But also, when we paired it with the facts, what happened was that that piece of misinformation completely cancelled out the facts. So, if we expose people to the facts about climate change, they update their beliefs in the right direction. But once you introduce this piece of misinformation, it completely neutralises the positive effect of facts. That was quite a shocking revelation.

In some of our other work, we've exposed people to videos about conspiracy theories on climate change. What we found was that just a 30-second video talking about how global warming is a hoax, with some sinister music in the background, not only made people less likely to think that there was a scientific consensus on the issue of global warming but also less likely to sign a global warming petition.

Fake news about climate change comes in various forms, but it can be very harmful for people's judgements and the actual decisions that they make on the issue.

Spreading myths around vaccinations

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Vaccination is a subject that's vulnerable to fake news just because people already have deep-seated misconceptions. For example, the debunked myth that autism is linked to vaccinations, which, of course, we know isn't true; or that you can get the flu from the flu vaccine, which obviously is also not true.

But some of these myths have been circulating and some people have been receptive to them. It's already an area where there is some hesitancy, and so what you see now is fake news and misinformation playing into that.

For example, when you think about the coronavirus, one of the most active groups spreading misinformation are actually the same people who are anti-vax, because it links into their worldviews and their beliefs about the world. The obvious cure for the coronavirus is a vaccine or effective antiviral treatment — and that plays into anti-vax sentiment. It activates all those sectors of society that are already hesitant about vaccinations. That is a huge problem because at the end of the day, you need enough people to be vaccinated in order to have herd immunity. If we have enough people who are vaccinated, the virus can’t spread. But when that proportion gets compromised, that's where we get into a lot of trouble.

Science and personal freedom

The anti-science and anti-elite element is often not so much about the science itself, but about what the science implies for public life and public policy. Different groups in society question different kinds of science because the implications are different.

For example, what do climate change and the coronavirus have in common? With both, the implication of the science is that we need to do something that involves government intervention and restricting people's personal freedom, whether through self-isolation, quarantining, restriction of shopping and visiting friends, wearing a mask or personal sacrifices like driving less, flying less, eating less meat and so on. For those individuals in society who have strong free market ideologies or strong personal views towards freedom, the science isn't really the issue. It's what the science implies for their personal and public lives.

That's why you see a lot of distrust and resistance and why fake news and misinformation can play into that. With other kinds of science issues, it's not so much government intervention that is the underlying issue, but it could be big corporations that are going to be the target of the distrust. It's not the nitty gritty of the science itself, but what the science implies for people's lives.

Strategies for separating truth from fiction

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What is real and what is fake? There are two answers to this. One is to just have the science guide us and say that if there's a scientific consensus and enough scientific knowledge, then that is our most accurate understanding of the world. We have to also communicate the uncertainties about what we know and what we don't know about the scientific status of things. The coronavirus has been a great example of evolving science and people needing to get used to uncertainty and that we don't have all the answers. Then we can have healthier conversations about what's accurate and what's not and the fact that a lot of what we think is accurate comes with a little bit of uncertainty. And that's okay. That's how science works. It’s a new model of thinking about science and the answers that we can and cannot offer, but it’s still a good basis for evidence-based public policy and shouldn't be used to stall potential solutions.

The other answer is that maybe we shouldn't tell people necessarily what's true or false, but help train them to recognise the techniques that are used in the production of misinformation. Once people have the tools to spot these techniques, they can figure out for themselves what they think is true or false.

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The consequences of fake news

Roozenbeek, J., Schneider, C.R., van der Linden, S., et al. (2020). Susceptibility to misinformation about COVID-19 around the world. Royal Society Open Science, 7(10), 1-15.

Blastland, M., Freeman, A.L.J., van der Linden, S., Marteau, T.M., & Spiegelhalter, D. (2020). Five rules for evidence communication. Nature, 587, 362–364.

Bavel, J.J.V., Baicker, K., van der Linden, S., et al. (2020). Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 460–471.