The Infodemic and How to Safely Navigate the Information Landscape

It is certainly interesting times that we find ourselves in. Fake news, pervasive science denial, a new conspiracy theory seemingly every week, tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths from the pandemic that could have been easily avoided by acknowledging the recommendations coming from the scientific community, and many more examples. Society is swimming in false information that is literally costing people their lives at this point and driving us apart through polarization [1]. But what can we do? Quite a bit actually and it’s important to remain optimistic as there is a clear path moving forward that will lead us towards a brighter future. However, it’s going to take some serious work.

The Infodemic

At the beginning of the pandemic, the spread of false information online, particularly on social media platforms, was so pervasive that the WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus at the Munich Security Conference on February 15 said the following “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic” [1]. The infodemic label is fitting given how, much like the novel SARS-COV-2 virus, the spread of false information is global and sowing chaos in society. However, instead of a microscopic, biological organism attacking our health, it is bytes of false information capturing our attention and distorting reality.

While there are a number of types of false information that you will find prowling the information landscape these days, the three overarching types are:

Misinformation - Information that is false, but not created with the intention of causing harm (e.g., someone posting an article containing factual inaccuracies but not realizing it).

Disinformation - Information that is false and deliberately created to harm an individual, organization or country by malicious actors (e.g., a political rival deliberately posting falsehoods about you with an intent to discredit).

Malinformation - Information that is based on reality, but used to inflict harm on an individual, organization or country (e.g., revealing the sexual orientation of an individual without public interest justification.). Again, while this information is true, its intent is to harm rather than serve the public interest.

Note, this particular form of information is unique among the three primary types as it is not technically false. Nonetheless, it deserves recognition as it is as damaging to society’s social fabric as are the others.

Within these three types of false information, we can further compartmentalize them into seven categories [2].

Satire or Parody: No intention to cause harm but has potential to fool.
Misleading Content: Misleading use of information to frame an issue or individual.
Imposter Content: When genuine sources are impersonated.
Fabricated Content: New content is 100% false, designed to deceive and do harm.
False Connection: When headlines, visuals or captions don’t support the content.
False Content: When genuine content is shared with false contextual information.
Manipulated Content: When genuine formation or imagery is manipulated to deceive.

As you can see, the three primary types of false information come in a variety of forms and it is best to think of the seven categories as coming in a spectrum of harm. You can consider satire as lower level false information, which inflicts the least amount of harm whereas false content or manipulated content lie at the other end of the spectrum with the potential to inflict the most amount of harm.

If you are interested in learning more about the different types of false information and/or how to combat the various forms, please check out our recent book, “Thinking Critically. From Fake News to Conspiracy Theories. Using Logic to Safely Navigate the Information Landscape,” which you can learn more about here.

The Solution

The first step to tackling any problem is to simply admit that you have one. While this first step may appear easy, in practice, this can be quite difficult. As you are most likely aware, humans come hardwired with a suite of cognitive biases that helped us to survive for millennia, but tend to get in the way in the modern world. This is why admitting to yourself that you are wrong is not easy as there is a “cognitive discomfort” that comes along with such an admission, which is known as cognitive dissonance. Unfortunately, this discomfort can cause us to rationalize beliefs that we know are wrong. For example, the belief that you are not a victim of false information because you are a smart, thoughtful individual who thoroughly vets your sources of information before sharing anything online.

The prevalence of false information and the noticeable negative impacts on society requires that we all admit to ourselves that we are clearly victims to it collectively. In other words, that we are not as good as we think we are at vetting credible sources of information. This step is critical if we are determined to fix this problem.

Once we’ve admitted to ourselves that we clearly have a problem, the next step is to then implement a solution. In the case of false information, misinformation in particular, there is a technique known as inoculation that can be used to help society mollify the spread. Similar to an inoculation (i.e., a vaccine) against a virus or bacteria, which provides immunity to the pathogen, the technique of inoculation provides immunity to pathogenic information [3]. Further, analogous to herd immunity (i.e., the point at which there is a sufficient percentage of a population immune to the disease, which significantly reduces the likelihood of new infections), nerd immunity is a similar concept where enough members of society have been "inoculated" with a critical thinking skill set to significantly decrease the spread of false information. If we are serious as a society about reducing the spread of false information that is clearly damaging the social fabric through political polarization, losing members to conspiracy theory cults, inciting violence, the glorification of science denial masked as patriotism, etc., we must all commit to becoming better critical thinkers.

Some of the strategies to combat false information are as simple as fact-checking to the more complex such as learning the intricacies of logic. However you choose to go about it, what is important is that you make an effort to do so. Much like the current pandemic, the infodemic will not get any better unless we all start thinking more critically about the information we use to direct our lives.

Inoculation

Inoculation is the technique where (1) flawed argumentation used in the misinformation is explained or (2) the scientific consensus on the topic of interest is highlighted [4,5,6,7,8]. In particular, explaining the flawed argumentation is powerful as this learned technique can then be translated by the individual to other situations. That is, there is a positive spillover effect. For example, learning a type of flawed argument commonly used to deny anthropogenic global warming can then be potentially translated to common flawed arguments encountered surrounding vaccine safety.

To best understand the technique of inoculation, you should have a good understanding of what an argument is and how to discern the good from the bad. The best cognitive tools to acquire to help you to do this come from philosophy. Within logic, a branch of philosophy, there is a strict definition for how an argument is structured, what a good/bad argument is, the concept of a logical fallacy, and when it’s appropriate to reject an argument. Additionally, there are over a hundred different types of logical fallacies and you should familiarize yourself with the more common types.

To assist you on this pursuit, there are plenty of wonderful resources that you can find on our website as well as our recently published book. Beyond the resources available on our site, our book has even more material to help you master logic, familiarize yourself with some of the more common logical fallacies, establish the credibility of information, and become a more responsible consumer of information overall.

Example

This example is taken directly from the “Debunking Handbook”, which was authored by numerous scientists, including Dr. John Cook who was a guest on the Thinking Critically podcast (episode here) as well as Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky who was also a guest (episode here) [9]. This document highlights the detrimental effects that misinformation can have on society and goes into further detail about the technique of inoculation.

Conclusion

The overall goal of you learning this material is to use it to improve the quality of your life as it's difficult to have the best life outcomes when you're consistently a victim of false information. These virulent forms of information are here to stay and it will always be a problem for society, but you can choose to minimize your victimhood. The first step is to read and re-read our book until you have a firm understanding of the material and use our website as an additional resource to further cement your understanding of logic, the various forms of false information lurking the landscape, and other important topics needed for better information hygiene.

The truth is important. I cannot think of something more critical to the social fabric of a society than the accuracy of the information being shared between one another. The truth matters. Science matters. Credible information matters. Together, we can elevate our thinking and collectively improve the informational health of our society as its future is built on the foundations that we lay now. Let’s make sure that these foundations are built with truth in mind to give us the best chance at a prosperous future.

Life is full of irrational actors who will use all sorts of bad arguments to persuade, deceive and otherwise do whatever they can to captivate and manipulate. Don’t be fooled and, more importantly, don’t fool yourself. Be absolutely sure that the arguments that you tell yourself are good and not flawed by faulty logic or false information. The information landscape is perilous, but with the help of our book and website as your guide, you will always be able to find your way towards truth.