The Crisis of Misinformation and the Possibility of Prevention

By Sofia Sokic, Program Assistant

In light of SFU Public Square’s upcoming event with Science World, Spotlights: Misinformation and the Toxic Drug Crisis, I wanted to provide insight on misinformation and how it connects to issues in society today. We have entered a new phase in the digital world, where anyone with internet access can post their opinions online and have it hailed as fact. As a student in the School of Communication at SFU, I find this issue to be incredibly relevant across all generations as anyone with a cell phone can unknowingly be exposed to fake news and misinformation on an almost daily basis. Misinformation and disinformation are cornerstone methods of pushing harmful ideologies, which can sway opinions in elections and spread panic on issues of regional, national and global importance.

What is misinformation? 

To answer this question, we must first understand the difference between misinformation and disinformation. According to the American Psychological Association, misinformation is false or inaccurate information. The person repeating the misinformation doesn’t know that it is wrong nor are they deliberately spreading false information. Simply put, it is getting facts wrong. Disinformation is false information that is weaponized to deliberately mislead people–it is the intentional spread of lies and untruths. 

Mis/disinformation can often be used congruently when thinking about the impact it has on people and how it can change public perceptions. The Royal Society of Open Science created a multimodal analysis of disinformation and misinformation, with researchers wanting to gain a deeper understanding of when and why mis/disinformation happens. Ultimately, they found that following the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an influx of mis/disinformation in the news and on the internet. They also concluded that mis/disinformation “are successful when they are more subtle, more memorable, more entertaining, and more believable than factual information.” 

In this article, I will be using the term 'misinformation' but when doing so, I am referring to the two terms in tandem as I will be looking at the larger effect it has on people rather than the root cause or motivation of the false information

Why does misinformation happen? 

Misinformation on the internet and in the news happens for a multitude of reasons. The American Psychological Association argues that misinformation occurs because people are more likely to accept false information as truth when they are exposed to it through the media and/or the individuals they are surrounded by and trust. This can then lead to people unintentionally spreading misinformation to others. People are also likely to spread misinformation if it aligns with their personal world views or social norms that evoke strong emotions from them. 

On a greater scale, misinformation is spread by larger news organizations and political figures to manipulate people into believing ideas or falsities by twisting the truth. This could also be referred to as ‘fake news,’ a term you may have heard used a lot in the past few years, particularly after the 2016 American Presidential election. According to research into the methodological challenges of studying fake news, that election marked a new understanding of ‘fake news’ and its effect on people’s perception of political candidates and their platforms. The Cambridge Dictionary defines fake news as “false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke.” 

There were some very notable examples of fake news within the past few years that caught the attention of millions who believed it to be fact. The infamous ‘Pizzagate’ was one of the biggest fake news stories during the 2016 election. Spreading rapidly on the internet and originally posted to Twitter (X), this conspiracy theory touted that a pizza shop in Washington, D.C, called Comet Ping Pong, was concealing an underground child trafficking ring that was allegedly run by the presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her delegates. This story was spread across right-wing social media pages and blogs which consequentially influenced someone to carry an assault rifle into the pizza shop with the intent to ‘self-investigate.’ This story ended up being a hoax and labeled as a “fictitious conspiracy theory” by D.C.’s Police Department. 

A more recent example of political misinformation was former president Donald Trump’s claim during the 2024 Presidential Debate that Haitian immigrants were “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats” in Springfield, Ohio. Trump boldly promoted this misinformation as fact to the debate’s audience of over 67.1 million Americans, despite his claim being categorically false. The fiction can be traced back to a few sources, notably a self-proclaimed social media influencer who went on an anti-Haitian and anti-immigrant rant at the Springfield City Commision meeting, as well as debunked on Facebook, Reddit and Twitter/X. The Springfield City Commision released statements that there have been no credible reports filed to their departments but that did not stop Trump nor his running mate J.D. Vance from continuing to perpetuate this lie.  

For an example of a popular fake news story that aired on the side of humor and comedy, we can look to the YouTube channel Yes Theory, who in 2018, decided to prank the world into thinking that Justin Bieber ate his burritos sideways. The YouTubers found a Bieber lookalike and took a picture of him eating a burrito sideways, then uploaded it onto social media. This photo went viral, taking on a life of its own on the internet and eventually ending up on mainstream media who promoted this as a factual news story. Later, Yes Theory admitted that it was all fake. 

How can we avoid being tricked by misinformation and fake news? 

Falling victim to misinformation is not exclusive to any generation, gender, employment status, income, or education level. Misinformation is so abundant that anyone can be influenced by it and can unknowingly promote falsities.  

Nathan Walter and Riva Tukachinsky created a meta-analytic examination of the continued influence of misinformation in the face of correction to better understand why misinformation happens and what we can do to stop it. They concluded that there are four ways to correct misinformation and avoid its influence. First, we can criticize the credibility of the source to make sure that their intention is not to spread misinformation. Second, if the information is found to be false, there must be a same-source correction. This ensures that the corrections are applied to the original source so people can see what information was incorrect. Then, along with these corrective measures, we must make sure that the same-source corrections are consistent to worldviews so that readers may understand how accurate information fits with people's broader belief system. And finally, we must contextualize the information and explain why the original explanation could be perceived as factual. 

Of course, these are strategies that might be more applicable to larger news organizations and companies to fight misinformation. While it is important to hold the media accountable for sharing correct and fact-checked information, we must also ask the question: how can we practice this in our daily lives on our own?  

The most important way to individually counter misinformation is to fact-check in our own time and make sure the information we receive, and share is completely truthful. Websites such as Snopes, FactCheck, and PolitiFact were created so that people can easily check if the news and information that they receive is truthful and based in fact. Another important consideration is the motivation and biases of the person, media outlet, or organization from which we are receiving our news and information. Checking the political biases of news outlets can be good practice, and Ad Fontes Media created an interactive chart with that purpose. 

By using these techniques, we can begin to combat misinformation as individuals while also holding news outlets and large organizations accountable for the information they share. There is a lot of work to be done surrounding misinformation, from news organizations to personal research, and we must all work together to create preventative measures and stop the spread of misinformation.