How to Combat Disinformation

According to MIT, false news travels six times faster than accurate news. Nearly 50% of all adults have shared a story on social media they later discovered was untrue, according to Statista. More worryingly, 1 in 10 openly admit to having intentionally shared disinformation on social media.

Once thought to be the exclusive purview of nation-states and activists, the deliberate spread of disinformation has emerged as a threat to every company, regardless of size, strategy or industry.

No leadership team is immune from attack. And as the threat continues to evolve, business leaders must use new strategies to detect, combat and mitigate potential disinformation attacks.

I recently hosted a Page Conversation to discuss how communications executives can navigate the “Disinformation Age” with several industry experts, including:

• Jane Carpenter, Global Head of Communications at Wayfair; 
• Sander van der Linden, Professor of Social Psychology in Society and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Laboratory at the University of Cambridge; and 
• Patrick Hillmann, Global Head of Innovation, Crisis & Risk at Edelman.

A few takeaways:

• Social media has become the superspreader of disinformation, disrupting the flow of truth and making traditional crisis response ineffective. 
• Disinformation communities typically begin discussing attacks months in advance on the “grey web” (places that aren’t monitored by typical social listening tools). 
• Once companies understand the motives behind disinformation, it becomes much easier to defend against. This understanding becomes the base for disinformation “inoculation.” 

Understanding the threat 

Disinformation travels differently than truth. Unlike mainstream media, social media works based on engagement, not accuracy. For that reason, it’s not hard to target disinformation towards the users most likely to believe it.   

Patrick Hillmann, Global Head of Innovation, Crisis + Risk at Edelman, dove deep into the nascent business of disinformation, looking at the motivations behind attacks and the broader themes at play.  

From Hillmann’s perspective, there are three main types of disinformation spreaders: 

1.     Formal organizations: Paid by bad actors to run bots to promote their client’s agenda. 

2.     Cell-based attackers: Highly organized, yet decentralized groups.

3.     Cynical individuals: Individual actors whose primary motivation is to create havoc.  

Once all three of these groups get involved, the disinformation attack reaches terminal velocity.  

Inoculating the threat 

The key to getting ahead of these attacks is first identifying where they originate. Grey web communities, such as 4chan, have poor APIs and are not easily tracked by social listening tools. This makes them ideal for coordinating a disinformation attack: A seemingly random conversation on Twitter may actually be the result of months of planning and conversation on 4chan. Getting ahead of these conversations early is most effective, and most of the best examples of defense never even make the news.  

One of the most effective forms of disinformation on social media is a concept called negative out-group coverage. Simply put, people will willingly share negative information about the groups they are opposed to, regardless of accuracy. Dr. van der Linden says this is fueled by a psychological response.

Psychological tools can also be applied to combat disinformation. Inoculation theory, on which Dr. van der Linden is a leading expert, is grounded in the idea that, if someone has been exposed to how a disinformation attack works in advance, learning the motivations and strategies behind the attack will create a natural resistance to the disinformation.

For example, once a Russia-backed campaign to discredit the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was reported in a Wall Street Journal article, the conversation shifted from “is the vaccine safe?” to “why is Russia attacking the Pfizer vaccine?”, effectively neutralizing the campaign.  

Leaders globally are warning, rightly, about the massive threat disinformation poses to business and to the public sector. But as communicators seek to deeply understand the origins of disinformation, they can begin to develop and evolve strategies to combat it.  

Jim O’Leary is Edelman U.S. Chief Operating Officer and Corporate Affairs Practice Chair.