Learning To Identify Misinformation and Disinformation
By Patty MacLeish and Aviva Schneider
A very successful pop star meets a good-looking football player. They date. It’s big news. By January 2024, the player’s team is on its way to Super Bowl LVIII, and the Internet is on fire with stories about the singer and the football player. The story making headlines is that the two of them are in cahoots to influence voters in the presidential election.
Sounds bizarre, right? And unbelievable! But it did happen, and you probably know who the two people at the center of this falsehood are. We aren’t revealing their names for good reasons. Read on to find out why.
Important elections are coming up in 2024 and, unfortunately, stories like this one may very well affect the outcome. The League of Women Voters of the Cooperstown Area strives to help citizens be informed about issues and candidates. In this installment of “A Voter’s Guide to Elections,” we are focusing on misinformation and disinformation. We want voters to ignore the rumormongering, concentrate on the facts, and learn to spot misinformation and disinformation and stop its spread.
Let’s start with definitions. Misinformation is inadvertently sharing false information. Most of us have had the experience of reading or hearing something, believing it, telling someone else about it, and then later learning that our original source was mistaken. Although we had no intent to do harm, by repeating misinformation, we’ve contributed to the spread of misinformation. Suppose you read a post like this on Facebook: “I didn’t know they lowered the voting age. My son is only 17 and he just registered to vote at school.” You and others share it and soon, Facebook is buzzing with the information that 17-year-olds can vote. Finally, someone comments: “In New York State a person who is at least sixteen years of age may preregister to vote and is automatically registered upon reaching the age of 18. Check it out on the Otsego County Board of Elections page.” No one meant any harm, but no one checked the facts before making the original post.
Disinformation is intentionally sharing false information with the goal of doing harm. The lives of pop stars and football players are not the League’s normal purview, but what happened to this couple is a great example of disinformation. What was said about them was meant to do harm by discouraging people from participating in the election.
Disinformation also happens in political speech. Candidates knowingly share false or not-exactly-true information about their opponents. With the expanding influence of the Internet in our lives, spreading of disinformation becomes easier and the consequences are more significant.
To use our voices—our votes—wisely, we need to be able to weed out the fiction from the facts. How can we tell if information we read or hear is true? Here are some techniques that can help spot misinformation and disinformation:
First, research the source. If the information is on a website, question its reliability. Does the site have political affiliations? Who funds it? Is it written by an individual person who has qualifications in the area being discussed? If the source is a friend, family member, or acquaintance, is the person someone who frequently exaggerates or someone who is level-headed and knowledgeable about the subject?
Next, cross check the source. Are multiple, reliable news sources saying the same thing? If not, that’s a red flag that you might have received misinformation or disinformation.
Check the publication date as well. Articles are passed around and around for years on social media. As time passes, things change, and an article that may have been accurate when it was published years ago might be irrelevant or misleading today. Photographs that claim to be contemporary may be from years ago.
“Juicy” headlines (“Senator’s Ex Reveals Marriage Secrets”) bring lots of clicks, and clicks bring money; writers have figured out how to get more clicks on mundane stories by writing outrageous headlines. Read past the headline, especially online, and most especially when the headline looks scandalous.
“Listen” to the tone of the article. When content is written in an emotionally charged manner, that’s a sign that the information is exaggerated or completely false. Reliable news sources don’t use emotional language. They use facts.
Even as we become experts at spotting misinformation and disinformation, how can we stop it from spreading? We have some tips.
First and foremost—don’t engage. This tip takes us back to our opening paragraph. Why did we not print the names of the pop star and the football player? Printing their names along with the story that is being told about them would mean that this story might be picked up elsewhere online and be the source of the disinformation. (“League of Women Voters Spreads Disinformation” might be that juicy headline.)
One thing you can do to stop the spread is create a new dialogue on something you know is true, something that you do want people to think about and discuss—like the example above about misinformation concerning voting age.
Finally, report disinformation if you feel it’s needed. Concerns regarding most social media posts can be made to the media platforms themselves. Other disinformation online can be reported to ReportDisinfo.org. If you see something about our local elections that doesn’t sound right, contact the Otsego County Board of Elections.
Patty MacLeish and Aviva Schneider are members of the Board of Directors of the League of Women Voters of the Cooperstown Area.
