Vanquish misinformation to save democratic society

Birds aren’t real, and the Earth is flat.

Wait. No. The Earth is hollow.

No. No. Actually, the Earth is flat, and that’s why the moon isn’t real. It’s just a projection.

Sure, we “landed” on the moon, but the United States government faked that. They shot the entire “One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for Mankind” on a soundstage in Hollywood.

And speaking of Tinsel Town . . . not only is Walt Disney cryogenically frozen, but the hit movie “Frozen” was created, according to an October 2022 report by Charlotte Chilton published in Popular Mechanics, “as a way to hack Google’s search algorithm and distract consumers from information about the late Walt Disney’s possible frozen procedure.”

These ideas, along with countless others — such as how the government killed John F. Kennedy Junior or that the COVID-19 virus was created in a lab . . . or the pandemic wasn’t real at all . . . or . . . the microchips! — are conspiracy theories. They pollute our public discourse and erode trust in the information ecosystem. They are just one type of misinformation, which is a communicative cancer destroying democratic society with increased speed and potency.

As the political cycle ramps up even faster in the race toward August’s primary elections and the general elections in November, it’s important to understand this democratic disease because we can treat the malady of misinformation.

We can battle the bollocks so wisdom can win, creating a better democracy by cultivating an informed society that can make better decisions at the ballot box and in their communities. But to do so effectively, we need to understand what misinformation is, how it spreads, and why it is a problem.

Misinformation is the umbrella term encompassing all forms of inaccurate and misleading information. However, it is important to understand the true definitions. 

According to research published in 2021 by scholars Michelle M. Maresh-Fuehrer and David Gurney, misinformation is “false information that is disseminated without harmful intent.” This shouldn’t be confused with disinformation, which Maresh-Fuehrer and Gurney defined as “false information that is deliberately created and shared with harmful intent.” 

The difference comes down to intentionality. 

If Grandma shares an article on Facebook without knowing it’s wrong, she’s spreading misinformation. 

But if Uncle Jimbo creates a Facebook post filled with lies in the hopes other people will believe it, he has turned his shack in the woods into a disinformation distribution center.

Also tucked under the umbrella of misinformation are “fake news” and conspiracy theories. 

“Fake news” is a term often bandied about by politicians. 

According to research I’ve conducted, they use this rhetorical term to cast doubt on news and media coverage that they believe to be unfavorable to them or incompatible with their ideas, their opinions, or the narrative they are trying to tell about themselves.

Conspiracy theories like those mentioned previously are explanations for otherwise unexplainable occurrences. As Maresh-Fuehrer and Gurney argued, conspiracy theories give people a way to make sense of the world by giving reason to certain events that cause wide-ranging effects.

No matter what we call them, though, these forms of inaccurate information are a problem. They are erroneous media messages spreading lies and untruths, and understanding how they spread is vitally important to defeating the deafening din of misinformation.

Unfortunately, misinformation can spread in a variety of ways. 

Old men swapping stories at the local co-op. Women gossiping at church socials. Parents chatting at little league games . . . All of these can be hotspots for embers of misinformation to catch fire and grow into a blaze of falsehoods. 

However, the real fire often smolders in your pants . . . Well, at least in your pocket. Most likely, but to each their own . . .

I’m talking about cell phones. Smartphone. iPhones. 

Or, if you don’t like yourself, Androids.

These handheld computers give people access to a veritable charcuterie board of content. Especially thanks to social media.

Such platforms are teeming with crap . . . tons of information and entertainment. They are the ultimate in accessible media. Everyone can create and consume to their heart’s content. 

Though you can gorge yourself on this smorgasbord, the information isn’t always healthy. Like the world of health supplements, no one is making sure that what people are posting meets any standard of safety. 

This means there is no gatekeeper, or as media researchers Efrat Nechushtai and Seth C. Lewis explained in 2019, no one is making decisions about content selection, content placement, et cetera . . . except for algorithms. 

Bad actors take advantage of this. Lies get told. Rumors spread. Society fractures. 

Of course, social media isn’t the only source of misinformation. Traditional media platforms such as television and radio also play a role. 

Partisan cable news channels become a haven for political ideologues. The opposing political party is presented as the enemy and in constant conflict with the other end of the political spectrum.

Television news does this by relying on outrage, as Dannagal Goldthwaite Young’s 2021 book explained. This fires up and exploits the emotions of individuals with certain political beliefs to maintain viewership and increase profitability.

Radio does the same thing.

Though liberal talk radio never took off, conservative talk radio found success thanks to outrage fueled by misinformation. Rush Limbaugh is the poster child of this, even though he died in 2021.

As Thomas Frank pointed out in “What’s the Matter with Kansas?,” conservatives “can turn to nearly any station on the AM dial to hear their views confirmed.”

And the idea of people’s views being “confirmed” is important.

Some may align with media scholar Homero Gil De Zúñiga’s “News Finds Me” perception, which suggests people believe they will simply bump into important news and information out in the physical and digital worlds.

However, the reality is that most people silo themselves off into filter bubbles so they only experience selective exposure to a highly curated corpus of information.

This is confirmation bias, and it means that people tend to focus on messages that confirm their beliefs and opinions while avoiding messages that conflict with their beliefs and opinions, as George David Hooke Pearson and Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick explained in the academic journal “Mass Communication and Society.”

This allows them to avoid uncomfortable cognitive dissonance, which is when recently received information conflicts with previously held information or knowledge.

And that makes sense. After all, everyone likes to be right. Everyone likes to feel warm and fuzzy . . . like a pair of socks right out of the dryer. 

So if misinformation “feels good,” then it takes root in people’s minds, but this “good feeling” is anything but positive. It has dire impacts on people and society because “Misinformation Finds Them.”

These impacts are why misinformation is a problem. 

It creates division by destroying trust and breeding polarization, which damages our democracy. 

That’s because people rely only on their preferred media outlets to learn about the world around them, leaving individuals operating with different sets of facts. 

If we don’t work from the same basic facts, we can’t get along. We lose social capital.

In his wildly popular book “Bowling Alone,” political scientist Robert Putnam discussed how social capital is necessary for a functioning democratic society. 

He explained that social capital is a web of mutual trust and cooperation among members of a community or society, and that is a key ingredient for civic engagement, which includes voting in elections, volunteerism, and general community involvement.

If misinformation runs rampant through our news and information ecosystem, people don’t see their neighbors as friends but as enemies.

This stems from a distrust of the news. 

According to a 2020 study by the Pew Research Center, more than 50% of Americans have little to no confidence in the news media or in the public-interest motives of journalists, and this lack of news trust becomes more pronounced when divided along political lines, as 60% of Republicans believe the media intends to mislead the public, which causes inaccuracies in news reports.

The result is polarization, which occurs when there is a void of reliable information or when individuals do not feel like their voices are being heard. It causes people to retreat into their political corners and consider those on the opposite side of the political aisle as wrong, the opposition, or even evil.

Media outlets don’t help when they treat politics as a game. This horse-race journalism only feeds into the division by amplifying the misinformation that pervades public discourse and continually eats away at the informed citizenry required for democracy.

However, we can begin to correct course and turn the tide of the information war.

We can become more media literate.

In the book “Misinformation Finds Them: Hybrid Media and Radicalization in Rural America” I wrote with my co-author Jacob Groshek, we suggest that increased media literacy can be a powerful antidote to the disease of misinformation. 

In the 10th edition of his “Media Literacy” textbook published in 2021, W. James Potter explained that media literacy “is a set of perspectives that we actively use when we expose ourselves to the mass media to process and interpret the meaning of the messages we encounter.”

These perspectives are tools we can use to discern fact from fiction and finally defeat misinformation.

Potter suggests 10 guidelines for increasing media literacy. 

Without turning this into an hours-long lesson more fitting for a college lecture hall, we can boil this down to consuming, analyzing, and evaluating media content.

This means we need to consume different types of media content with intentionality. We have to expose ourselves to all types of news messages. We can’t just look at the news we agree with. We have to be informed about all perspectives.

Then, we need to consider what each piece of information means. We have to break it down into its core elements so we can understand how the message is constructed and what it is really saying.

Finally, we must evaluate the message to determine its accuracy. If we compare the various messages, their components, and how they are constructed, we can cut through the noise and see reality by uncovering the commonalities of each news story while discarding the manipulative tactics these kernels of truth are wrapped in. 

We might group similar ideas or leverage inductive or deductive reasoning to make sense of the overall information being presented. Then, we can synthesize the information and develop a new and clearer summary of the topic. 

Of course, we have to be self-aware and keep our own opinions in mind. We can’t let our own faulty beliefs get in the way. We have to approach the news and information we encounter with the mindset of a scientist, always seeking the truth and relying on the facts and data in front of us as we construct our knowledge.

It might sound like a lot of work, but with practice, going through this process becomes second nature. And if we add in basics like looking at the url to make sure it’s really the source we think it is, we can stop misinformation from impacting us.

As we become more media literate, we can help those around us develop these abilities, too. 

In doing so, we can build an army of militant misinformation fighters. 

We can be the surgeons who slice the communicative cancer from society.

We can vanquish misinformation and create a better democracy by cultivating an informed society that can make better decisions at the ballot box and in their communities.

And it should help save those people who are afraid of falling off the edge of our “flat” planet.

Todd R. Vogts, Ph.D., is a native of Canton, a resident of McPherson County, and a media researcher and educator. He can be contacted with questions or comments via his website at www.toddvogts.com.

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