Lucky for me, I haven’t had any serious direct impacts from the spread of misinformation or disinformation, however, studies do show that they both have a serious negative effect on our society as a whole. The spread of misinformation and disinformation causes a great mistrust, confusion, and undermining of our democracy. There are several major ways misinformation is effecting us all and I think it’s safe to say we’ve all experienced the following in some way over the last several years.
Political Consequences of Widespread misinformation
Politically motivated misinformation often comes from several sources – politically motivated groups, conspiracy theorists, American political operatives (Cambridge Analytical) and foreign governments. I was a little surprised to hear how often other countries use social media to spread their propaganda and disinformation campaigns in the US but the proof is there. The most recent and most obvious example of this is the COVID pandemic. According to this article on RFE/RL : an independent editorial aimed at providing uncensored news, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said on December 1 that it had removed more than 600 accounts linked to a Chinese influenced operation that claimed the United States was pressuring the World Health Organization (WHO) to blame COVID on China. Because of these campaigns along with campaigns started right here by American political operatives, there has been a great distrust in the US government transpire among millions of US citizens. According to this article , The Edelman Trust Barometer, which for two decades has polled thousands of people on their trust in core institutions, found 57 percent of people believe government leaders, business chiefs and journalists are spreading falsehoods or exaggerations.
Unfortunately it doesn’t just stop there. A study done at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) shows that China and Russia have played a central role in spreading COVID-related disinformation and propaganda, both contributing and accentuating each others efforts. In addition to causing erosion in our trust of the government, the propaganda and disinformation campaigns have continued during COVID and begun to bleed into the public healthcare industry, causing huge health risks.
Health Effects
No thanks to the latest technologies and social media, misinformation now travels faster and farther than true information, causing serious heath risks, and creating a huge challenge for those working in the healthcare industry. By spreading misinformation in regards to our health and well-being, we are often amplifying controversy about things like vaccines, cancer treatments (sometimes even propagating unsafe and unproven treatments), changing evidence, and creating contradictory or conflicting findings. Think about the COVID pandemic. How many of us were constantly hearing about, talking about or even questioning all the different information going around? I know I was. The spread of misinformation about our health during the pandemic undermined the public health efforts and caused so much confusion and mistrust.
It’s harder to see the truth
Sometimes it’s hard to tell what news is fake and what news is real and oftentimes we have ideas about what fake news means. According to the PEW Research Center, When people sense fake news, 78% check the facts of the news stories themselves. They then go no to take measures like changing the way they use social media, stop getting news from a specific outlet, and reducing the amount of news they take in overall and to even cut out some or all social relationships. Because of the overwhelming amount of misinformation/disinformation it’s become harder and harder for people to even want to be well informed.