Disinformation and
propaganda disguised as truth constitute more than a minor threat to social and
political stability. This has been found to be so everywhere such practices are
evident.
Responsible authorities
and non-state institutions have been keeping a sharp eye on this, within the
context of the use of new and social media, for about two decades now. Free
expression rapporteurs from the United Nations, Europe, Africa and the Americas
have issued more than one joint communiqué on the subject. There is also a lot
of literature on traditional propaganda campaigns and how they work.
In the meantime, there is
a growing body of direction on how this problem can be significantly dealt with
– particularly when it comes to addressing the quality of traditional and new
media audiences – without substantially threatening free expression.
The basic modus operandi
behind the most recent versions of this phenomenon are now well known and
understood and the direction flows of such information are becoming easier to
track.
We know that both elements
supportive of governments and those in opposition are routinely co-opted to
facilitate and to enhance flows of disinformation. There are also non-state private
actors that may for a number of reasons attempt to sway public opinion on a
variety of matters, some criminal in nature.
I have repeatedly argued
in fora examining such issues that a primary, durable intervention would be to
focus on improving the discerning eyes and ears of receivers of news and
information. “Media and information literacy” is the fancy term employed by
development people nowadays.
Let’s break this down a
bit and assume someone in a Whatsapp group posts a social media message ostensibly
emanating from a senior police officer.
Let’s also say there is
reference to a “Home Affairs” department of government and “upcoming elections”
in the country.
What we would need are
people to start asking some basic questions and to apply a more naturally
sceptical pre-disposition. Firstly, do we have a “home affairs” department in
T&T? Secondly, what “upcoming elections”?
Then, armed with an
abundance of scepticism, portions of the message from your inbox can be entered
into a search engine or one of several websites now used to identify “fake
news.” Snopes is an easy one to use.
Voilà! “Home Affairs” and
“upcoming elections” together with other key terms used in the Whatsapp message
will yield an October 17, 2017 missive from South African officials regarding
ANC leadership elections there last year – replicated almost word for word in
the Whatsapp message. Takes a few minutes.
The next, slightly more
difficult exercise, would be to work out ‘who’ might be behind what appears to
be a coordinated effort to generate panic and concern about a visitation from
some “home department” to verify elections-related information.
Many times, the person who
innocently posts clearly bogus information on the group, would try to later diminish
the potential harm by stating that such information can serve as a useful
warning about the possibility of fake state operatives making the rounds.
Inquisitive sceptics (a
condition to which some journalists are prone) would then position the finding
alongside prevailing disinformation on, let’s say, the application of the
property tax - to cite one possible, non-exclusive lead - and a variety of
complementary online resources, including shady “news” outlets and supportive
Facebook groups and pages.
Now, be clear, there is an
essential difference between misinformation and disinformation. What online
propaganda campaigns do is promote intentionally false (and often malicious)
information through the use of people and channels that have the potential to
innocently disseminate false information to wide and diverse audiences.
Additionally, one of the
other main features of coordinated campaigns of disinformation is the effort to
weaken the value of countervailing, authoritative sources of authentic
information, of which the so-called “mainstream” mass media are but one.
It is therefore not
surprising to often witness a high level of hostility toward and slurs directed
at journalists and their media houses by politicians and their surrogates. This
has been proven to be the case up North.
It’s almost axiomatic that
disinformation campaigns embrace attacks on journalism and individual
journalists. What is needed is a mainstream and social media consuming public
that more readily diagnoses some pretty self-evident symptoms. Keep your eyes
wide open!
(Originally published in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian)
