Spot the fake

In the midst of a pandemic, America is also battling another threat which is equally as undetectable and has far-reaching consequences for the stability of the nation. As is evident from the January 6 insurrection attempt on Capitol Hill, America’s populist tide is rising and misinformation is at the heart of this.

If the first half of the last decade has taught us anything, it’s that social media has been instrumental for modern social movements. From the Arab Spring in the Middle East, to the Zwarte Piet protests in the Netherlands, social media has been a vital tool in helping the voiceless have their voices heard. However, what the second half of the last decade taught us is that the same tool can be mobilised to malign political process, censor legitimate protest and misinform the public – a practice that is becoming more and more common in today’s America. While new media still possess the power to help organise grass-roots movements, in the United States they are increasingly being used to destablise democratic structures – especially during the reign of terror of former President Donald Trump.

“People have always been susceptible to misinformation,[however] the real challenge now lies in the immediacy, scope and ease of dissemination we now see with new technologies like social media,” stated Syracuse University political scientist Emily Thorson who has also c0-authored a book on the matter.

With an increasingly digitalised world, more and more people are using social media. Media trends and technology tracking firm, Activate Consulting found that there was a massive increase in the amount of social media users between 2019 to 2020. The firm found that the average Facebook user spends as much as 16 hours per month on the platform. Meanwhile, the average American spends more than 13 hours a month using some form of technology and media, a trend that is only likely to go upwards. In fact, increasing numbers of American’s use social media as their primary source of news. A Pew Research Centre study found that nearly one in five Americans said that they got their political news from social media in 2020 and those that did were also more likely to engage with conspiracy theories and were much less concerned about unreliable information.

However, this is not just a case of the masses being fed falsehoods by tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy nuts. While misinformation is partly that, it is also accompanied by its nastier cousin: disinformation, the practice of deliberately feeding a target audience fake news. Disinformation is not a new practice, as it was often used in elections using old-fashioned means such as making false claims about one’s opponent during a speech or endorsing advertisements that character assassinated the other party. However, now the practice has become digital and almost indetectable. Harvard University Shorenstein Centre on Media, Politics and Public Policy Research Director Joan Donovan stated that, “disinformation has become an industry, which means financial incentives and political gains are now aligned.”

Large-scale media cells are being formed to help political candidates, businesses and really, whoever has enough money to pay them, spread all kinds of information that may not be scientifically accurate, but serves the benefactor’s purpose. Just some of the results of this have been political dissent, riots and vaccine skepticism in the United States. Former Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs has maintained that, “the January 6 [insurrection attempt] was a physical manifestation of disinformation around the 2020 election.”

Those following the use of media in the last decade are anything but surprised by the rise in bipartisanship and right-wing narratives, and have instead expected this to happen for a long time. Engagement – the number of likes, shares and comments a posts receives on Facebook and Twitter – on the social media platforms of the top 100 American new outlets increased from 8.6 billion in 2019 to 16.3 billion in 2020, according to NewsGuard. It further found that a major portion of this growth has benefitted unreliable websites.

While this has been detrimental in America’s political process, misinformation has also created a public health crisis in the United States with regards to the Covid-19 pandemic. Day in and day out, the internet is filled with new narratives that promote vaccine skepticism. Twitter trolls, famous athletes, politicians, religious figures and even, in some cases, healthcare professionalshave fallen victim to false narratives around the coronavirus and the vaccines being produced to prevent its spread.

The Kaiser Family Foundation released 8 false statements to test the information people had gained about the pandemic. Its survey found that 78 percent of adults in the United States either believe or aren’t sure about at least one of the eight false statements presented to them. Meanwhile, it further found that unvaccinated adults and Republicans are most likely to hold misconceptions about the Covid-19 vaccines, and the pandemic in general. This is because, “people’s trusted news sources are correlated with their belief in Covid-19 misinformation,” notes the report, with the misinformed usually following Fox News, One America News and News Max.

As the country grows more divided, many continue to blame Trump for the catastrophic rise of fake news. It is after all Trump who popularised the phrase. The problem however, is more deep-rooted than that. The internet deep-space has long been peddling conspiracy theories, either believed by fringe groups, or paid for advertisers looking to sell a big-business narrative. Therefore, Trump cannot be credited for the use of digital misinformation, but what his presidency did do, both wittingly and unwittingly, was make this type of news somehow part of legitimate mainstream discourse. The average American is now emboldened enough to claim that their brand of knowledge and science is in fact correct and indisputable. With what was once considered outlandish narratives becoming mainstream, an insurrection attempt is just the start of what is in store for American democracy.

The writer is Sub-Editor, Bol News