Rebecca Skippage is the editor of a team of specialist anti-disinformation journalists at 大象传媒 Monitoring and spent her Journalism Fellowship at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism researching what public service media can do to tackle misinformation.
I love to think that you鈥檙e poring over every word I write. That every carefully placed comma and elegantly constructed phrase is giving you as much joy to read as it did me to write. Sadly, though, I suspect I know what you鈥檙e doing. Reading the headline, scanning the first par, heading straight to the list. And that鈥檚 if you鈥檝e stopped to read it at all. Oo, is that a video of a baby panda falling over? Where was I? We interact with information in the same way as those we write for: in a place and way that suits us, and engage with what catches our attention.
If we want to combat misinformation by getting good quality information to our audiences, we need to clock that, and work with it. Here are my five tips for doing that.
1. Understand your audience
- Information inequality exists. Research by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism shows even during the pandemic, less privileged parts of the UK population are less likely to turn to news media as a source than the more privileged. Age, gender, income and education are all factors. If they鈥檙e not finding us, we need to find them. We need to shift from a top-down, 鈥榖roadcast鈥� mentality that requires them to come to us, and speak to people where they are and in a way that interests them. Ask: how is this 鈥渦nreached鈥� audience networked? Which spaces are they in? What platforms? What networks? How can we meet them there, and produce material they鈥檒l find engaging?
2. Focus on storytelling
- The disinformation-spreading 鈥榖ad guys鈥� are great at producing compelling content: emotive stories of outrageous injustice, dramatic visuals, images that are just too good not to share. I鈥檓 not suggesting we use the same manipulative techniques, but in looking at why we fall for disinformation, there is invaluable intel for our own content production.
- Basically, our brains are pretty lazy. The more easily we process material, the more likely we are to believe it. And we love repetition. If we鈥檝e heard something before, we will latch onto it with greater ease the next time. Take Donald Trump鈥檚 Twitter account which repeated allegations about voter fraud more than 70 times in the run-up to the 2020 election.
- So, focus on the human impact of disinformation and how it affects individuals. Keep design simple and engaging. Speak the language of the space you鈥檙e in. And keep repeating key points.
3. Create a community
- Information ripples out in circles, not straight lines. The bad guys get this. They know and exploit an environment where status social capital is gained by sharing engaging, entertaining or apparently useful content: where (seemingly) hyper-local insights are trusted. They build like-minded communities which rally together to around disparate, emotively-expressed causes.
- Again, we can learn from this. Anti-disinformation work shouldn鈥檛 come across as top-down, 鈥渢ake your medicine鈥� education; it鈥檚 about creating a community that can work together using peer-to-peer learning and crowd-sourced problem solving.
- Does your organisation have a social community that could be grown into an army of 鈥淎nti-Disinformation Warriors鈥�? Could you collaborate with other media organisations or community groups who share your values to build one?
4. Be agile
- In approach and process. Investigations are agenda-setting, debunks hugely valuable, but simple, smart graphics can be equally as effective. Be able to code-switch between the different platforms. Have material ready to go if it鈥檚 likely that disinfo will flood a situation (elections etc) and smart evergreen 鈥渉ow to avoid misinfo鈥� content if something comes out of the blue. Have the right workflows set up to allow you to respond at pace. And as much as it pains us as journalists, don鈥檛 be afraid to repeat material (have I already mentioned that?)
5. Review impact
- It鈥檚 incredibly hard to work out if something has prevented someone from believing a lie, but we must be better at seeing what gets traction. Use platform metrics and 鈥� once you鈥檝e created your community - listen to them to see what鈥檚 cut through.
And let鈥檚 share what we鈥檙e doing. This is a global problem; no one organisation will have the answer. It鈥檚 going to take all of us, pulling in the same direction, to come up with solutions that work.
Read Rebecca Skippage鈥檚 Journalism Fellow report: