Shark Sightings And Ordinary People

Michael Hedges April 20, 2020 - Follow on Twitter

A true fact during these times of epidemic anxiety is the soaring audience for news and information from established, reliable outlets. Major newspapers and their online portals, television and radio channels, often public broadcasters, have seen big jumps in readership, page views and audience estimates. It is not for a lack of information that anxieties have risen. Peddlers of fake news are still out there.

In a new report on the divide between those able to embrace facts (and reality) and those in fantasyland wordsmiths at the esteemed Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University (Reuters Institute) have emblazoned the term infodemic. It was World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who brought back the term at the Munich Security Conference (February 15). It was coined in 2003 during the SARS epidemic by former US Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce David Rothkoph in a Washington Post (May 11, 2003) op-ed: “When the Buzz Bites Back.”

“A few facts, mixed with fear, speculation and rumor, amplified and relayed swiftly worldwide by modern information technologies, have affected national and international economies, politics and even security in ways that are utterly disproportionate with the root realities,” he wrote. “It is a phenomenon we have seen with greater frequency in recent years -- not only in our reaction to SARS, for example, but also in our response to terrorism and even to relatively minor occurrences such as shark sightings.” As all dutiful historians of social media know, 2003 marked the launch of Facebook predecessor Facemash. The infodemic remains out of control.

"Overall, we find that most people rely on news, trust the news and that those who use news media as a source of information know more about the (COVID-19) disease than others," wrote Reuters Institute director Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and senior research fellow Richard Fletcher. “Navigating the Infodemic,” was published April 15 and based on an online survey of 8,500 persons conducted between March 31st and April 7th in six countries; Argentina, Germany, South Korea, Spain, the US and the UK. In all six countries people reported using online or social media portals most for news about the epidemic; the most in Argentina and Spain, the least in Germany where television prevailed.

Pluralities in each country reported using news organizations for coronavirus news, followed generally by national governments, national health organizations and scientists, doctors and health experts. Only in the US did a significant minority (25%) cite “ordinary people” as their source.

The report contained two large caveats: "Large minorities in every country do not engage with news (and do not trust it) and do not engage with government advice (and do not trust it) and, in turn, often know less about the crisis. If people see something as misinformation, even if it is true, they react to it differently. If they see something as reliable, even if it isn’t, they may well act on it.”

Facebook (Including WhatsApp and Instagram), YouTube (subsidiary of Google) and Twitter have made progress removing fake news about the coronavirus as well as ads for fantasy cures from their services; 76%, 73% and 41%, respectively, said a separate Reuters Institute study of UK respondents. Through the January to March period these primary social media platforms increased fact-checking by nearly 1000%.

Most fake news (59%), reported this study, is actually real news “artfully manipulated, distorted, decontextualized and reworked in order to spread misinformation.” The rest is pure fantasyland. The most effective fake news relies on a sliver of truth, like a quote taken out of context, sufficient to raise plausibility. Add voices of “ordinary people” and conspiracy theories and disinformation roam free across the lands. With years of practice, the professionals are very adept at this.

Fact-checking has had little effect on the spread of disinformation online. Some folks, obviously, appear to actively seek out fake news to reinforce certain beliefs and points of view.

Slovakia was not included in the recent Reuters Institute reports but a local survey about media trust and fake news was recently reported by Balkan Insights (April 3). Similar to other countries, trust in traditional media has seen a boost with the coronavirus onset. That does not mean disinformation spread by social media has diminished. “Whatever happens on Facebook gradually finds its way into the standard media too,” said Globsec Policy Institute analyst Miroslava Sawiris.

“Conspiracy websites will probably never be more popular than mainstream media, but they can be harmful even if they influence the decisions of a small percentage of citizens,” added daily newspaper Dennik N media reporter Filip Struharik. “Another significant problem is that some politicians don’t make decisions based on facts, but based on news from disinformation websites. Some of them even produce new disinformation.”

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