By David Gordon, associate editor
Disinformation efforts go back at least seven centuries, and social media and other new approaches to news dissemination may be increasing their effects, according to a UW-Eau Claire faculty member with more than two decades of experience in evaluating information.
Kate Hinnant, head of instruction and communication at UW-EC’s McIntyre Library, spoke to some 20 people Tuesday evening to lead off a two-part series on “Information Self-Defense.” The programs are intended to help people distinguish between reliable information and “fake news,” in the context of both political campaigns and news media reporting.
Hinnant traced the origins of misinformation and “malinformation” back at least to the 14th century, when reports of an Asian plant that produced live lambs achieved considerable currency in Europe.
She also quoted an 1807 letter from Thomas Jefferson which asserted that “nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”
More recent developments
More recently, many countries have taken to disseminating false information and “fake news,” which seeks to exploit fissures in targeted societies. “Russia has it down pat” and has been at it a long time, she said, and added that “the more polarized we are, the weaker we are as a country.”
Among the techniques used to spread fake news, Hinnant listed creating a big lie and wrapping it “around a kernel of truth” while concealing one’s role in the process. She said journalism schools need to develop methods to verify information before it is published or broadcast.
She said the “constant need for the scoop” – one result of cable TV’s 24-hour news cycle – has contributed to the growth of misinformation. So have reductions in news staffs and the resulting drop-offs in fact-checking.
Hinnant said the explosion of online news reports and the use of social media as news sources have also aided the misinformation growth, noting that search algorithms lend themselves to the spread of misinformation.
A ‘post-truth’ society?
She suggested that we may now be living in a “Post-Truth society,” with a much lower “threshold of belief” than in the past. Hinnant added that there is evidence indicating some people re-post false news items not because they believe them but, rather, because doing so “proves” they are part of a “belief group.”
She noted a study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard Media Lab, who tracked 1.4 million news stories that were shared on Facebook during the 2016 election. Preliminary analysis of these data, gleaned from more than 10,000 news sites, indicated that fake news was part of the 2016 election picture but was far from the most influential factor in the political dialog.
The most influential fake news site ranked 163rd among the most frequently shared sources, she said.
Hinnant also noted that, especially online, corrections are never able to catch up with the original bad information. For some people, online corrections may produce a “backfire effect” that strengthens their belief in erroneous information.
Hinnant has spent 25 years teaching college students how to evaluate information. In addition to her McIntyre Library position, she holds an appointment as an associate professor in UW-EC’s Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies program.
Final series presentation next week
She will present the second and final talk in this series at 6 p.m. next Tuesday (Feb. 11), also in the Eau Claire Room on the lower level of the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, 400 Eau Claire St. Her presentation, open to the public at no cost, will deal with how to distinguish between reliable and questionable information and sources.
In an email last week to the CVPost, Hinnant said “disinformation fascinates me as an information problem, because it brings up questions about technology, democracy, censorship and authority.”
On Feb. 11, Hinnant will discuss solutions proposed around the world for combating disinformation. She will also teach attendees some techniques they can use to fact-check the way professionals do.
NOTES: the quote from Thomas Jefferson included here was written 20 years after his famous statement – usually quoted only in part – that he would prefer newspapers without a government rather than a government without newspapers. But Jefferson then added that he meant to describe a situation where “every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.”
An online post commenting on the MIT-Harvard study said that ”fake news happens, but its impact and visibility comes mostly from mainstream news reporting about fake news.”