Flatten the Fake News Curve
TLDR: Sharing fake news has real life consequences. It’s our responsibility not just the platforms to mitigate fake news. We should contribute to creating a culture of interrogating what we receive and not sharing what we have not interrogated.
“As government leaders and health professionals race to contain an outbreak on the verge of a pandemic, they are simultaneously battling another hard-to-defeat scourge: the explosion of half-truths and outright falsehoods online. Nowhere is the threat more dire than on WhatsApp, a service largely hidden from public scrutiny, vast in its global reach and often at the center of some of the world’s most panic-inducing conspiracy theories.” Reference
Should I respond to this? Should I forward this?
I, like you, am subscribed to WhatsApp channels that share random videos, audio clips, and forwarded messages on corona. I often filter past those messages by ‘experts’ on conspiracy theories of 5G causing corona, pastors prophesying of the end of corona.
I recently got a forwarded message from a highly educated and influential professional. It was an audio clip of a pastor who reportedly worked at Vodafone and was sharing the truth about corona being the result of 5G connections. I shared a few articles in response that I found on google which debunked the absurd theory. He wasn’t endorsing the theory but just passing it along perhaps because it was curious.
When we are looking for answers, we are susceptible to believing answers even if they are not the truth. One bias that influences our belief is that we are more likely to believe what we hear from people who have social capital with us (friends, acquaintances, family etc) and people who have authority we respect (report themselves to be doctors, pastors etc)
Like me you are likely getting many “answers” to questions you are asking or didn’t even think of. Each time your brain is likely asking “Should I respond to this? Should I forward this?”
What are the real life effects of not interrogating fake news?
Brazil 2016: Yellow fever began expanding south at the rate of more than a mile a day, turning Brazil’s coastal megacities into mega-ticking-timebombs. The only thing spreading faster is misinformation about the dangers of a yellow fever vaccine — the very thing that could halt the virus’s advance. And nowhere is it happening faster than on WhatsApp. Reference
WhatsApp has recently served as a staging ground for political falsehoods, including a raft of rumors that imperiled the country’s most recent election.
India 2018: At one point in 2018, experts could trace two dozen deaths to fake news, including false reports of child kidnappings, that spread on the service.
Nigeria 2018: A hoax that Buhari died and had been replaced by a clone went viral online, including on WhatsApp.
Pakistan: In Karachi, Pakistan, local aviculturist Urooj Zia said she saw misinformation last week in an unlikely place — WhatsApp groups dedicated to parrot breeders. The dubious messages said nearby Aga Khan University Hospital had released a patient after a “false indication of the virus.” Still, she said two people had circulated the message in two different groups, each with hundreds of followers, raising the potential that it spread even further.
One lady who received fake news reached out to the doctors of the hospital to interrogate the claim. She said, “Debunking crap online, is what I do because someone has to.”‘ Reference.
Whose responsibility is it to fight misinformation?
While there is understandably pressure for these platforms (WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter etc) to build systems to fight misinformation, the truth we often avoid in our critique is that the platforms alone can’t do this.
It’s all our responsibilities to flatten the curve on fake news. I’d like to suggest two rules of thumb when we next encounter the moral questions: Should I respond to this ?Should I forward this?
Interrogate: Before we share forwarded messages, let’s ask ourselves “Have I verified the truth of this message?”
Don’t be silent: Instead of being silent in our groups, encourage others to take responsibility for interrogating what they share before they share it.
The fake new curve will be flattened by engaging (not socially distancing) to spread a culture of interrogating for the truth.
What do you think citizens can do to flatten the fake news curve?
Related Resources
Ways WhatsApp and other platforms are recently trying to mitigate fake news.
Participate in this Quartz survey if you have been asked to share questionable coronavirus claims
Learn more about how nations are actively taking on misinformation using this map
Meditative Verse
“The gullible believe anything they’re told; the prudent sift and weigh every word.” Proverbs 14:15
