Empowering Citizens to Halt Fake News: Moving from Reaction to Prevention
A recent case of fake news related to vaccination in Romania further exposes the failure of traditional methods to combat disinformation. Correction alone won’t cut it anymore, especially with technology evolving at lightning speed.
By Cerasel Cuteanu
Populist parties have repeatedly employed disinformation as a means to gain political advantage. The pressing task at hand is to devise effective methods to combat these strategies and safeguard our citizens.
The traditional approach to combating disinformation is primarily through correction. However, this method has proven to be ineffective and may become even more obsolete in the face of rapid technological advancements and the manipulation of our cognitive biases to distort our perception of reality.
A recent outburst of fake news regarding vaccination in Romania has further confirmed this fact.
In early August 2023, the Romanian ministry of health brought forth a draft of the new National Vaccination Strategy for public discussion. It is worth noting that the document does not include any provisions for mandatory vaccination and that Romania currently holds one of the lowest vaccination rates globally.
In a swift reaction to the ministry’s announcement, a Romanian populist-leaning group launched an online protest, falsely claiming that the government intends to impose compulsory vaccination. The false news was officially debunked. However, it remains unclear whether this correction has made any impact on the steadfast belief of populist supporters who continue to maintain the conviction that the government is attempting to impose mandatory vaccinations on the population.
The protest was orchestrated by a self-proclaimed “civil society” group, which was later discovered to be nothing more than a Facebook page dedicated to promoting vaccine conspiracies. Remarkably, this page bears a striking resemblance to those created by Russian government-backed troll farms, which were previously implicated in meddling with the 2016 U.S. elections. The protest gained significant support from a Romanian populist party known by its acronym AUR, which stands for Alliance for the Union of Romanians.
In a recent survey conducted by Avangarde, a local market research institute, it was revealed that a significant majority of AUR voters, approximately 65%, expressed their belief that anti-Covid vaccination was unnecessary. This finding comes as no surprise, considering the well-established inclination of this particular electorate towards anti-vaccination narratives, not only within Romania but also beyond its borders. The pressing issue at hand is whether there exists a viable approach to assist individuals who support parties like AUR in avoiding manipulation by politicians who shamelessly exploit fake news in order to gain public support.
The relevance of such questions is growing as it becomes evident that traditional approaches to combating disinformation, such as retractions and corrections, are ineffective when targeting individuals trapped in algorithm-driven social media echo-chambers.
During the recent online protest led by Romanian populists, local journalist Mircea Marian made an effort to rectify the spread of false information.
Marian posted a comment on the Facebook page of AUR’s president, George Simion, aiming to fix the inaccuracies. However, his attempt was met with overwhelming opposition from AUR’s supporters, a reaction that serves as a prime example of bias against disconfirmatory evidence (BADE), a cognitive abnormality described by Bronstein and Cannon. BADE explains why individuals persist in clinging to inaccurate beliefs even when confronted with evidence that proves their inaccuracy.
Reactions like these are frequently observed among individuals who fall victim to false information. The resistance to accepting factual corrections has been extensively researched. Numerous experimental studies, such as those conducted by Ecker et al. (2017), Lewandowski et al. (2012), and Nyhan and Reifler (2010), have revealed the ineffectiveness of correction methods in numerous instances.
In the ever-growing battle against fake news and disinformation, the need for alternative solutions has become apparent. It is crucial to find ways to empower citizens to combat false news in real-time, rather than relying solely on ex post facto corrections. A potential approach could involve equipping individuals with the ability to discern and rectify misleading information on their own, similar to the concept of self-control. This notion, rooted in Bandura’s social learning theory from 1976, suggests that people can independently adjust their behavior and discern what constitutes reliable news content.
A fresh approach is needed to battle disinformation more effectively.
Cerasel Cuteanu is a fellow with the Media and Journalism Research Center. He pursues a PhD at the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania.
