It's blatantly obvious that the American system is heavily influenced by mis- and disinformation campaigns, including but not limited to that coming from Russian trolls and bots. In the case of Trumps presidency, it's the only way that you can get so many people to proudly vote against their own interests.
Where I live in Scandinavia, disinformation hasn't yet influenced things too much (although I'm sure it will ramp up in years to come). I'm curious about everywhere else (and also on opposing views about my own region from people who also live here). In particular, with extremist far-right parties winning ground using similar information campaigns in Spain, France and Germany, it feels like information warfare is not limited to the US anymore.
This leads me to my first question:
1. How is dis- and misinformation affecting your country?
Furthermore, it's well-known that even explicit labeling of disinformation online tends to paradoxically have the opposite effect (ie people tend to remember the wrong information more clearly when it's labeled). I also feel that people who are often targets of disinformation, such as low-information voters, actually do not really care about the truth, but just like sticking it to the other side of the aisle. In a way, it's like disinformation is even being weaponized by e.g. far-right officials as well as voters, since they know that unapologetic use of disinformation enrages the left even more.
So my second question is:
2. What do you think is an effective way of dealing with dis- and misinformation?
2 comments
The worst misinformation that plagues Ireland is that “Irish is a dead language”. As a native Irish speaker, this statement makes me go nuclear.
You do hear Irish people who had a bad experience in school have absolute disdain for our nations and cultures native language. You’ll hear its “old, dead and useless in modern life” “shur its not spoken anywhere else” and all this other shite.
Irish is alive. It’s not dead, it’ll never die. It would just be good if Irish people learned to speak it
1. Caused Brexit – at least I want to believe that wad the driving force
2. I want to say get rid of social media, but the cat’s already out of the bag. I would make laws to force the remaining major news outlets to only report facts. No opinions or one-sided political analysis. Make it incredibly strict and refine it so there is no way for it to be abused. Over time, this will restore confidence in traditional news. Make all social media have real actual non politicised fact-checking on it, and heavy fines for social media companies that spread misinformation. Involve communities in the process of transparency, show how information is gathered and spread, and mandatory critical thinking classes in schools. Regular reviews on what’s working and what’s not as well to keep the process relevant and working for society.
All this needs to be funded by social media companies that want to operate based on market share
As I’m typing this, it’s starting to sound quite authoritarian to me, but it’s a plague on society and needs to be dealt with.