Misinformation

Misinformation is false or inaccurate information.[1] Examples of misinformation include false rumors, or insults and pranks, while examples of more deliberate disinformation include malicious content such as hoaxes, spearphishing and computational propaganda.[2] Its main effects raise fear and suspicion among the general population.[3] News parody or satire can become misinformation if it is taken as serious by the unwary and spread as if it were true. The terms "misinformation" and "disinformation" have often been associated with the neologism "fake news", defined by some scholars as "fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent".[4] The main difference between misinformation and disinformation is misinformation is shared accidentally, while disinformation is shared deliberately.[5]

Not to be confused with Disinformation.

History

The history of misinformation, along with that of disinformation and propaganda, is part of the history of mass communication itself.[6] Early examples cited in a 2017 article by Robert Darnton[7] are the insults and smears spread among political rivals in Imperial and Renaissance Italy in the form of "pasquinades". These are anonymous and witty verse named for the Pasquino piazza and "talking statue" in Rome, and in pre-revolutionary France as "canards", or printed broadsides that sometimes included an engraving to help convince readers to take their wild tales seriously.

The spread in Europe and North America of Johannes Gutenberg's mechanized printing press increased the opportunities to spread English-language misinformation. In 1835, the New York Sun published the first large-scale news hoax, known as the "Great Moon Hoax". This was a series of six articles claiming to describe life on the Moon, "complete with illustrations of humanoid bat-creatures and bearded blue unicorns".[6] The fast pace and sometimes strife-filled work of mass-producing news broadsheets also led to copies rife with careless factual errors and mistakes, such as the Chicago Tribune's infamous 1948 headline "Dewey Defeats Truman".

In the so-called Information Age, social networking sites have become a notable vector for the spread of misinformation, "fake news" and propaganda.[4][8][9][10] Misinformation on social media spreads quickly in comparison to traditional media because of the lack of regulation and examination required before posting.[3] These sites provide users with the capability to spread information quickly to other users without requiring the permission of a gatekeeper such as an editor, who might otherwise require confirmation of its truth before allowing its publication. Journalists today are criticized for helping to spread false information on these social platforms, but research such as that from Starbird et al.[11] and Arif et al.[12] shows they also play a role in curbing the spread of misinformation on social media through debunking and denying false rumors.

Identification and correction

Information conveyed as credible but later amended can affect people's memory and reasoning after retraction.[13] Misinformation differs from concepts like rumors because misinformation it is inaccurate information that has previously been disproved.[3] According to Anne Mintz, editor of Web of Deception: Misinformation on the Internet, the best ways to determine whether information is factual is to use common sense.[14] Mintz advises that the reader check whether the information makes sense and whether the founders or reporters of the websites that are spreading the information are biased or have an agenda. Professional journalists and researchers look at other sites (particularly verified sources like news channels[15]) for that information, as it might be reviewed by multiple people and heavily researched, providing more concrete details.

Martin Libicki, author of Conquest In Cyberspace: National Security and Information Warfare,[16] noted that the trick to working with misinformation is the idea that readers must have a balance of what is correct or incorrect. Readers cannot be gullible but also should not be paranoid that all information is incorrect. There is always a chance that even readers who have this balance will believe an error to be true or that they will disregard factual information as incorrect. According to Libicki, readers' prior beliefs or opinions also affect how they interpret new information. When readers believe something to be true before researching it, they are more likely to believe information that supports these prior beliefs or opinions. This phenomenon may lead readers who otherwise are skilled at evaluating credible sources and facts to believe misinformation.

According to research, the factors that lead to recognizing misinformation is the amount of education a person has and the information literacy they have.[17] This means if a person has more knowledge in the subject being investigated, or are familiar with the process of how the information is researched and presented, then they are more likely to identify misinformation.

Prior research suggest it can be very difficult to undo the effects of misinformation once individuals believe it to be true and fact checking can even backfire.[18] Attempting to correct the wrongly held belief is difficult because the misinformation may suit someone's motivational or cognitive reasons. Motivational reasons include the desire to arrive at a foregone conclusion, so accepting information that supports that conclusion. Cognitive reasons may be that the misinformation provides scaffolding for an incident or phenomenon, and is thus part of the mental model for consideration. In this instance, it is necessary to correct the misinformation by not only refuting it, but also by providing accurate information that can also function in the mental model.[19]

Causes

Historically, people have relied on journalists and other information professionals to relay facts and truths.[20] Many different things cause miscommunication but the underlying factor is information literacy. Information is distributed by various means, and because of this it is often hard for users to ask questions of the credibility of what they are seeing. Many online sources of misinformation use techniques to fool users into thinking their sites are legitimate and the information they generate is factual. Often misinformation can be politically motivated. Websites such as USConservativeToday.com have previously posted false information for political and monetary gain.[21] In addition to the sharing of misinformation for political and monetary gain it is also spread unintentionally. Advances in digital media have made it easier to share information, although it is not always accurate. The next sections discuss the role social media has in distributing misinformation, the lack of internet gatekeepers, inaccurate information from media sources, and competition in news and media.

Social media

Contemporary social media platforms offer a rich ground for the spread of misinformation.The exact sharing and motivation behind why misinformation spreads through social media so easily remains unknown.[3] Combating its spread is difficult for two reasons: the profusion of information sources, and the generation of "echo chambers". The profusion of information sources makes the reader's task of weighing the reliability of information more challenging, heightened by the untrustworthy social signals that go with such information.[22] The inclination of people to follow or support like-minded individuals leads to the formation of echo chambers and filter bubbles. With no differing information to counter the untruths or the general agreement within isolated social clusters, some writers argue the outcome is a dearth, and worse, the absence of a collective reality, some writers argue.[23] Although social media sites have changed their algorithms to prevent the spread of fake news, the problem still exists.[24] Furthermore, research has shown that while people may know what the scientific community has proved as a fact, they may still refuse to accept it as such.[25]

Misinformation thrives in a social media landscape frequently used and spread by college students.[3] This can be supported by scholars such as Ghosh and Scott(2018), who indicated that misinformation is "becoming unstoppable".[26] It has also been observed that misinformation and disinformation come back, multiple times on social media sites. A research study watched the process of thirteen rumors appearing on Twitter and noticed that eleven of those same stories resurfaced multiple times, after much time had passed.[27]

Another reason that misinformation spreads on social media is from the users themselves. In a study, it was shown that the most common reasons that Facebook users were sharing misinformation for social motivated reasons, rather than taking the information seriously.[28] Although users may not be spreading false information for malicious reasons, the misinformation is still being spread across the internet. A research study shows that misinformation that is introduced through a social format influences individuals drastically more than misinformation delivered non-socially.[29]

Lack of Internet gatekeepers

Because of the decentralized nature and structure of the Internet, writers can easily publish content without being required to subject it to peer review, prove their qualifications, or provide backup documentation. Whereas a book found in a library generally has been reviewed and edited by a second person, Internet sources cannot be assumed to be vetted by anyone other than their authors. They may be produced and posted as soon as the writing is finished.[30] In addition, the presence of trolls and bots used to spread willful misinformation has been a problem for social media platforms.[31] As many as 60 million trolls could be actively spreading misinformation on Facebook.[32]

Bad information from media sources

An example of bad information from media sources that led to the spread of misinformation occurred in November 2005, when Chris Hansen on Dateline NBC made a claim that law enforcement officials estimate 50,000 predators are online at any moment. Afterwards, the U.S. attorney general at the time, Alberto Gonzales, repeated the claim. However, the number that Hansen used in his reporting had no backing. Hansen said he received the information from Dateline expert Ken Lanning, but Lanning admitted that he made up the number 50,000 because there was no solid data on the number. According to Lanning, he used 50,000 because it sounds like a real number, not too big and not too small, and referred to it as a "Goldilocks number". Reporter Carl Bialik says that the number 50,000 is used often in the media to estimate numbers when reporters are unsure of the exact data.[33]

Competition in news and media

Because news organizations and websites hotly compete for viewers, there is a need for great efficiency in releasing stories to the public. News media companies broadcast stories 24 hours a day, and break the latest news in hopes of taking audience share from their competitors. News is also produced at a pace that does not always allow for fact-checking, or for all of the facts to be collected or released to the media at one time, letting readers or viewers insert their own opinions, and possibly leading to the spread of misinformation.[34]

Impact

Misinformation can affect all aspects of life. Allcott, Gentzkow and Yu (2019:6) concur that diffusion of misinformation through social media is a potential threat to democracy and broader society. The effects of misinformation can lead to the accurateness about information and details of the occurrence to decline.[35] When eavesdropping on conversations, one can gather facts that may not always be true, or the receiver may hear the message incorrectly and spread the information to others. On the Internet, one can read content that is stated to be factual but that may not have been checked or may be erroneous. In the news, companies may emphasize the speed at which they receive and send information but may not always be correct in the facts. These developments contribute to the way misinformation will continue to complicate the public's understanding of issues and to serve as a source for belief and attitude formation.[36]

In regards to politics, some view being a misinformed citizen as worse than being an uninformed citizen. Misinformed citizens can state their beliefs and opinions with confidence and in turn affect elections and policies. This type of misinformation comes from speakers not always being upfront and straightforward. When information is presented as vague, ambiguous, sarcastic, or partial, receivers are forced to piece the information together and make assumptions about what is correct.[37] Aside from political propaganda, misinformation can also be employed in industrial propaganda. Using tools such as advertising, a company can undermine reliable evidence or influence belief through concerted misinformation campaign. For instance, tobacco companies employed misinformation in the second half of the twentieth century to diminish the reliability of studies that demonstrated the link between smoking and lung cancer.[38] In the medical field, misinformation can immediately lead to life endangerment as seen in the case of the public's negative perception towards vaccines or the use of herbs instead of medicines to treat diseases.[39]

Websites have been created to help people to discern fact from fiction. For example, the site FactCheck.org has a mission to fact check the media, especially politician speeches and stories going viral on the Internet. The site also includes a forum where people can openly ask questions about information they're not sure is true in both the media and the internet.[40] Similar sites give individuals the option to be able to copy and paste misinformation into a search engine and the site will investigate the truthfulness of the inputted data.[41] Famous online resources, such as Facebook and Google, have attempted to add automatic fact checker programs to their sites, and created the option for users to flag information that they think are false on their website.[41] A way that fact checking programs find misinformation involve finding the truth by analyzing the language and syntax of news stories. Another way is that fact checkers can search for existing information on the subject and compare it to the new broadcasts being put online.[42] Other sites such as Wikipedia and Snopes are also widely used resources for verifying information.

Some scholars and activists are pioneering a movement to eliminate the mis/disinformation and information pollution in the digital world. The theory they are developing, "information environmentalism", has become a curriculum in some universities and colleges.[43][44]

See also

References
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