As part of the Data Decade, at the Open Data Institute (ODI), we are exploring how data surrounds and shapes our world through 10 stories from different data perspectives. Trust and misinformation, explores the practices and technologies that are emerging to address the spread of untruths and misinformation
In the age of the internet and social media, there is a huge volume of false and misleading information, and it can travel faster than ever before. This misinformation affects everyone. For some people, it has cost them their livelihoods, their mental health, and in extreme cases, their lives.
At the ODI, we want data to work for everyone. For this to happen, people must be able to trust the ways that data is used, shared, collected and stored. But how can we build this trust when we hear about fake news and misinformation?
We speak to Pamela Duncan, Acting Data Project Editor at The Guardian, and Andy Dudfield, Head of Automated Fact Checking at Full Fact, to explore the practices and technologies that are emerging to address the spread of untruths and misinformation, and what happens if it’s left unchecked.
When looking ahead to the next 10 years of truth seeking and falsehood fighting, has this now plateaued and are the tools and mechanisms in place enough to keep misinformation in check?
Duncan thinks we’re not quite there. ‘Unfortunately I think things will get worse before they get better,’ she says. She notes that when fact-based articles can be misrepresented as a false flag or misconstrued as proving a conspiracy theory, for a lot of journalists it feels like ‘the rug is being pulled from under us’. She adds: ‘I’m hoping that things can come good, but I fear that there’s more road in conspiracy theory, mis- and disinformation, for a time to come.’
International collaboration is an area where there is room for optimism, as information crosses borders and languages, and so joining up fact checking globally is a key step. Dudfield says: ‘Fact checking and good information as a community – that’s really powerful,’ adding: ‘I can see a real world where people are collaborating and working with each other and particularly sharing the use of technology to support each other.’
The internet has changed the world of fact checking, from a relatively small-scale task to an explosion of information and claims. The internet has fundamentally changed the way that we communicate – now, everyone is a publisher – and the scale of the problem of addressing misinformation has expanded exponentially.
Full Fact is a fact checking organisation based in the UK with fact checkers and campaigners looking to expose and counter the harms of bad information.
Andy Dudfield, Head of Automated Fact Checking at Full Fact, explains: ‘We’ve had to adapt. We’ve looked at the use of technology to help us support our work because the volumes of data we’re dealing with have become huge.’
Dudfield also notes the cyclical nature of misinformation. ‘We see these things time and time again, around vaccine hesitancy – things that really have a damaging impact on people’s health and the choices that they’re making.’
Elections are also a time where misinformation is rife: ‘Pretty much every time we have an election, we will see some kind of information about, maybe the polling day has moved for a particular party; or that you aren’t allowed to use a pencil or a particular type of pen when you’re doing your democratic duty’.
Dudfield explains how the team uses artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor the UK media landscape, including the development of an AI model based on a lot of annotations from fact checkers to identify ‘claim-like statements’.
Pamela Duncan, Acting Data Project Editor at The Guardian, explains how her work as a journalist dovetails with this: ‘Journalistically my job is to provide facts rather than disproving misinformation,’ she explains, but notes that sometimes her work does stray into investigating (sometimes dubious) sources.
Along with colleagues, Duncan investigated how often Twitter accounts were cited in UK news articles by established mainstream organisations. They found that deliberate misinformation pushed out by Russian bots were cited more than 100 times by established mainstream UK news organisations.
Duncan also discusses sources she describes as ‘predatory open-access publishers’ that purport to publish scientific papers, but the majority of which undergo no peer review. ‘So again, you can see there’s a deliberate effort to make misinformation and disinformation look legitimate’. She notes the responsibility of journalists to act as a ‘fire warden’: ‘We as journalists have a responsibility to be careful not to give oxygen to the fire of this misinformation either through rehashing information, via tweets or citing false information’.
Origins of misinformation
But where and why does misinformation occur, and what is the motivation to create and share misleading content?
Dudfield notes that conspiracy theories flourish in times of uncertainty. ‘We’ve certainly seen studies that are showing that people are likely to turn to conspiracy theories when they experience a state of anxiety and powerlessness,’ he says, adding that these can originate from the fringes of message-board communities, all the way through to full state-actor-level misinformation.
‘Ultimately conspiracy theories perhaps aren’t limited to the fringes of the internet. We fact check national media organisations who have moved into these kind of areas, as things become more and more popular.’ And when conspiracies such as the QAnon movement are picked up so widely, there are real-world consequences.
Out of control?
So is the scale of misinformation out of control? And how can people navigate the world and know what’s real?
‘Is it out of control? No. Is there more that needs to be done? Absolutely,’ says Dudfield. He points to the web as a source of propagation. ‘The web is a wonderful thing. It’s a beautiful medium… But it does mean that we have this decentralised approach where anybody can say anything about anything at any time. And that creates just a huge volume of information. And there is no real centre to the web. There’s no ‘bit’ where you can go where there is real solid information that you can just totally rely on.’
And that circles around again to fact checking. ‘I think one of the key things with fact checks is that they are there to allow people to make up their own mind. It’s a really important part of the fact checking process,’ he says. ‘You can decide whether you agree or disagree with what we’ve put together’.
Trust in government, statistics and the media
While the UK government and the ONS publish a lot of high-quality content, there is room for improvement in the format and method of data sharing, which, in turn, can improve transparency and trust. Important data, statistics and information is all too often still buried in a PDF or MS Excel file, making it hard to access, use and share.
‘That creates complexity,’ Dudfield says. ‘So making sure that good authoritative information is easy to find and has all the correct context and caveats to ensure that can be used in the right ways, is really important because I think it’s a really strong foundation for good information. But also these are the kind of things, the kind of unglamorous plumbing, that is required to speed up the process of fact checking.’
Making data FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) is key to unlocking its power. ‘We want to be able to go faster. We want to be able to do more. And some of the things that stop us doing that are the inputs. And so better quality data being published is definitely part of that.’
Trusted media outlets are also vital, and one of the side effects of the avalanche of (mis)information to navigate is the renewed demand for trusted, factual reporting.
Duncan explains that people are demanding a better standard of fact-based journalism and reporting. ‘If there’s anything positive to be said on this whole topic, it’s that misinformation and disinformation do have the knock-on effect of inspiring people to invest in our journalism’. She notes that subscriptions are up: ‘People are doubling down on the truth by subscribing to The Guardian at times of upheaval. So, during the Cambridge Analytica scandal; the 2022 presidential elections and Trump’s bogus claims; all the way through to the Capitol riots; and around the climate crisis when we were exposing climate deniers – correcting inaccurate data, myth busting’.
The decade ahead
When looking ahead to the next 10 years of truth seeking and falsehood fighting, has this now plateaued and are the tools and mechanisms in place enough to keep misinformation in check?
Duncan thinks we’re not quite there. ‘Unfortunately I think things will get worse before they get better,’ she says. She notes that when fact-based articles can be misrepresented as a false flag or misconstrued as proving a conspiracy theory, for a lot of journalists it feels like ‘the rug is being pulled from under us’. She adds: ‘I’m hoping that things can come good, but I fear that there’s more road in conspiracy theory, mis- and disinformation, for a time to come.’
International collaboration is an area where there is room for optimism, as information crosses borders and languages, and so joining up fact checking globally is a key step. Dudfield says: ‘Fact checking and good information as a community – that’s really powerful,’ adding: ‘I can see a real world where people are collaborating and working with each other and particularly sharing the use of technology to support each other.’