Evaluating Information Wisely in the Age of Misinformation
“As people rely on social media as a news source, misinformation spreads rapidly. With the stakes so high heading into the 2024 election, we all must do our part to prevent unsubstantiated theories from obscuring facts and truth.”
The internet and social media have enabled information, both reliable and unreliable, to spread faster than ever before. We saw this play out dramatically around the 2020 US Presidential Election, when networks like Facebook and Twitter were filled with baseless claims of election rigging and voter fraud (Brenan, 2020). These unfounded allegations eroded public trust despite little evidence. This illustrates how the rapid proliferation of misinformation threatens democracy by skewing people’s perceptions of facts. As technology facilitates the speed and scale of content-sharing, equipping citizens with the skills for critical evaluation of sources and claims is essential.
Education plays a pivotal role in cultivating these competencies across society. Schools need to teach students how to assess credibility and accuracy when navigating today’s information landscapes. Jamieson (2020) suggests digital literacy initiatives should span K-12 curriculums and address recognizing rhetorical manipulation, verifying sourcing quality, understanding content biases, and more. Citizens informed by such programs can then apply similar principles when evaluating election information.
I witnessed the perils of misinformation contagion firsthand among friends and family around the 2020 vote. Someone I’m close with, who mainly consumes news from fringe sites and partisan Facebook groups, asserted with utter conviction that software glitches had deleted millions of Trump votes. Despite the far-fetched nature and lack of proof for such theories, he maintained they were facts. When I showed evidence from state election officials, nonpartisan vote auditors, and major news outlets disproving these claims, he dismissed it all as corrupt cover-ups.
Misinformation: A map of voting in battleground state Michigan wrongly showed an increase of over 138,000 votes for Joe Biden, and at the same time no additional votes for President Trump. In a matter of hours, it went viral and reached President Trump’s twitter feed.
This inability to weigh sources and claims objectively significantly shapes voting choices. Simmons (2021) found over 75% of Americans who believe the previous election was stolen support candidates pushing that narrative for future offices. Thus, the rapid spread of election falsehoods on networks like Facebook and Twitter can severely, misguidedly impact ballots.
These trends demand urgency ahead of 2024, as networked misinformation now severely threatens democratic processes. Expanding media literacy programs before the next presidential race is crucial. Congress should pass bipartisan policies and funding measures for states to implement critical thinking standards in K-12 education aligned with countering disinformation tactics (Jamieson, 2022). We know teaching methodologies like lateral reading help students cross-reference and debunk false claims far better than relying solely on content literacy skills (Wineburg & McGrew 2019). States can adapt such evidence-based best practices through curriculum updates ahead of 2024.
Additionally, colleges and universities need to ramp up courses and seminars focused specifically on carefully navigating today’s complex information ecosystems through evaluating rhetoric, bias, credibility, sourcing trails and more (Tufts University, 2022). Relevant offerings like Ohio State’s “Calling Bullshit” course that helps students identify misinformation or the University of Washington’s “Calling Bullshit in the Digital Age” should become mainstays rather than electives (Carlson, 2020). Moving forward, all graduates entering the workforce and civic life need strategies to critically analyze content sources and claims encountered on social platforms. Educational institutions have a profound responsibility here to strengthen these competencies.
Beyond classrooms, public agencies and media outlets also need to provide widespread programming to equip people of all ages with tools for navigating information wisely. Models like the UK’s Media Literacy Taskforce that promotes awareness campaigns, education, and regulation around assessing content credibly prove promising (Media Standards Trust, 2022). Similar initiatives scaled nationally in the US before 2024 would help counter the “infodemic” risks we now face. Of course personal responsibility still plays a role - citizens must commit to fact-checking rather than succumbing to “confirmation bias” that aligns claims solely with pre-existing beliefs. But education through schools and public programming provides a strong starting foundation.
In conclusion, with modern technologies dramatically accelerating election misinformation across networks, developing skills around critical source and claim analysis represents both a societal urgency and civic duty ahead of 2024. Education programs focused on information literacy and media wisdom can help counter manipulation efforts and renew public trust around voting integrity. This demands commitment from politicians, academic institutions and citizens alike over the next two years. Our democracy depends on it.
References
Brenan, M. (2020, November). 2020 election legitimacy. Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/321635/2020-election-legitimacy.aspx
Carlson, M. (2020, September 18). Calling BS in the digital age. University of Washington College of Arts & Sciences. https://www.washington.edu/uaa/advising/degree-overview/calling-bullshit-in-the-digital-age/
Jamieson, K. H. (2020). Cyberwar: How Russian hackers and trolls helped elect a president what we don't, can't, and do know. Oxford University Press.
Jamieson, K. H. (2022). The need for digital literacy education geared toward countering disinformation. Penn Biden Center. https://pennbidencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/DigitalLiteracyJAMIESON-v2.pdf
Media Standards Trust. (2022). UK government backs new Media Literacy Taskforce. https://mediastandardstrust.org/mst-news/uk-government-backs-new-media-literacy-taskforce/
Simmons, K. (2021). Belief in election fraud plummets among G.O.P. voters in new poll. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/us/politics/republicans-2020-election-polls.html
Tufts University. (2022, April 5). Educating informed digital citizens. Tufts Now. https://now.tufts.edu/articles/educating-informed-digital-citizens
Wineburg, S., McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., & Ortega, T. (2016). Evaluating information: The cornerstone of civic online reasoning. Stanford Digital Repository. http://purl.stanford.edu/fv751yt5934