What Is “Information Disorder” And How Can Journalists Combat It?
The information landscape in our current global climate is often fraught and flooded with misinformation and disinformation that is pumped out at alarming rates. The crowded pages of the internet have become in and of themselves disorderly; misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation have changed the way people consume news and created a new state of being called information disorder.
Information disorder is the result of misinformation, malinformation, and disinformation clogging up the landscape of available information so completely that consumers are no longer sure which information is the truth and which is false. The first step is knowing what each of these terms means.
Misinformation is “the sharing of false or misleading content because of a belief that it will help,” according to Dr. Claire Wardle, the co-director of the Information Futures Lab at Brown University. For example, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation emerged regarding a breathing test one could perform to diagnose themselves with infection from SARS-CoV-2. Misinformation is often propagated by well-intentioned consumers.
Malinformation refers to truthful information that intends to cause harm, or information that is distorted to fit a false narrative or outrage. Consider the decision to publish Hilary Clinton’s emails. Ultimately, much of that information was taken out of context and weaponized by bad actors to damage Clinton’s image to the American people and sow doubt in the electoral process.
Disinformation employs both of these tactics and aims to destabilize the news environment. The Big Lie of the “stolen” 2020 election is the culmination of disordered information working in perfect concert. “The people that stormed the [U.S.] Capitol on January 6th thought they were preserving democracy. They thought they were saving the Constitution,” said Wardle, who added: “This isn't always as easy as we used to think it was in 2016. The tactics are evolving, the landscape is evolving, and we have to be aware of those shifts in our information ecosystem.”
The next step for journalists is learning how to untangle the web of lies and avoid spreading any more of them. Bad actors will try to exploit journalists for coverage. For example, Q Anon conspiracy theorists pre-discussed where to stand for camera time when they attended Trump rallies in order to expose more people to the cabal-fearing conspiracy group’s beliefs. Journalists can fall for these manipulative tactics unwittingly and may even platform conspiracy theories to try and disprove them, actions that can unintentionally cause disinformation to spread further.
“You have to know your audience, and you have to make the decision: at what point is it now worrying enough to my audience that I need to step in and make clear that [misinformation] isn't true?” said Wardle. “Recognize that bad actors are sometimes deliberately trying to get you to debunk because they want you to give them oxygen. There's a lot of space for educating your audiences about that, rather than waiting till they've seen something false and then telling them they're wrong.”
Once you’ve recognized it, fighting information disorder can rear its ugly head in a few different ways. For one thing, it’s important to continue to pursue the truth in text and in your personal writing. The most powerful way to combat disordered information is to bring the narrative surrounding the information back to the empirically proven facts. That way, your journalism isn’t focusing on one particular idea or a particular person who is a part of the disinformation machine.
Another way is to diversify the way you put out content: Wardle recommends memes, which can be tailor-made to communicate lots of information in a very small, consumable picture. “Many people like us—researchers, journalists, fact checkers, scientists—we love text,” said Wardle. “We feel awkward about being emotional, being personal, being visual, because it's not the way we're trained. But that is what we have to be better at, because that is the way that our brains work. The other side has figured that out much, much, much better than we have.”
Journalists should also focus on answering lingering public questions succinctly and concisely before agents of information disorder can. That way, questions like how the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine was made so “quickly” can have real, satisfying answers available that are more easily accessible to public eyes than a conspiracy theorist who has filled in the blank for their audience.
Overall, when navigating the minefield of this often overwhelming disorder, journalists need to find clarity—both for themselves and their audience. Instead of disproving individual claims, journalists should ask themselves the following questions: Why is this person lying or misrepresenting this in the first place? What goal does this achieve?
Only when the narrative is clear can journalists help the public find their way back to the objective truth—or, at least, the closest thing we as humans can find as an agreed upon, objective truth.
