Truth, Disinformation and Propaganda
A month ago, I came across a news article that grabbed my attention. The headline said,
“Was Rahul Gandhi partying with the Chinese envoy at Kathmandu? BJP leaders claim so.”
It involved two major political parties of India, it mentioned China and it said it was happening in Nepal, so I had to go through the article.
The article was presented in a juicy gossip way, fun to read — however, there was no factual information in it and upon doing fact-check, I found out the news was fake. The news wasn’t even verified yet and it already spread like a wildfire. Soon, this rumour was trending on social media. There were trolls, news, blogs, assumptions, shaming and even controversial theories around this piece of information. Coming down to the fact check, the Congress leader was just attending a friend’s wedding and nothing more.
How many times have we seen baseless information circulating among the public? I’m sure you noticed they mostly involve public figures, political agenda or any immediate hot topic.
Fake information and propaganda, are they the same?
Based on the nature of the information and why it’s shared, the information can be categorized into three types. Firstly, misinformation. It’s a false piece of information that is shared without any intention of causing harm to others. Harmless trolls, biased opinions, claims without research etc fall under this category. Secondly, disinformation, which is similar to misinformation except they are shared with the intention of deceiving or harming others. This includes clickbaits and hoaxes. Lastly, malinformation is a true piece of information that is shared intentionally to harm people. This can range from personal information like contact numbers to explicit content about someone.
The above-mentioned information, when they are shared or portrayed in such a way that it can polarize and influence the public’s opinion of someone or something, is propaganda. We often hear this term overlapped with fake news and scandals. However, putting it into simple words, propaganda is basically spreading the information to create public biases. The information can be truth, half-truth, half-lie, white lie, false, fake or fiction. For example, in the above case, when Rahul Gandhi’s name was linked to a Chinese envoy, the news seemed to silently frame him to bring foreign interference in Indian politics. News like this is used to create political biases among people.
Role of tech in propaganda
Modern-day propaganda is catered by digital platforms and technology. There’s no doubt on how social media holds immense power and plays a vital role in spreading any information. Any news has the ability to go viral within a matter of just a few hours. Which is a good thing, if we want to spread awareness, do marketing or call for help during emergencies. However, research shows fake news spreads faster than the truth. A study on Twitter, published in journal Science, shows false news stories were 70% more likely to be re-tweeted than true stories. True stories take six times as long to reach 1,500 people as false stories to reach the same number of people. Looking at these statistics, I am shocked but not surprised though. The way these fake news are presented with all kinds of sugar, spice and scandalous vibe, they are very likely to fascinate people, tempting the readers to spread them.
Apart from helping the propaganda to spread faster, the technology has also become advanced enough to generate one itself. Propaganda, today is almost completely digital and here are a few examples of it.
Bots:
Army of bot accounts is used to amplify the voice of any campaign. They use automated algorithms to post the content online which is very common during election campaigns to show the active online presence of candidates. They not only influence people’s opinions but also alter statistics on support.
Cyborg:
Cyborg creates a mixture of human and automated content. An account is called a cyborg when a person periodically takes over a bot account. These accounts are tireless as bots and since they are looked after by humans, the information they post can be subtle to critical. This makes it even more difficult to differentiate between the real information and the auto-generated ones.
Text generation technology:
Text generation technology, also known as Natural Language Generation, is able to generate meaningful sentences. They can be used to create short phrases, like ‘Welcome to so and so place.’ to long reports and news articles. The technology is very good at mimicking the data that were fed while training the models and looks very real. However, the generated writings are not necessarily true all the time. Hence, they will always be a threat to generating misinformation, disinformation and propaganda.
This is a snippet from an article that was written completely by a Robot powered by GPT-3, OpenAI’s powerful new language generator. Here’s the link to the whole article.
Cheap fakes:
Cheap fakes are altered media content modified using easily accessible software. Software like Photoshop, features like face filters or simply using photos or the clips of the videos in some other context can make a cheap fake. Their uses range from entertainment to twisting the truth and spreading propaganda.
Deep fakes:
Similar to cheap fakes, deep fakes are also altered videos, except they use Machine learning tools. They can use audio content from one media file, and video content from some other media file and transform it into something different and real looking media. The deep fake technology was initially designed for movie dubbing purposes, however, it has been maliciously used to spread disinformation, identity theft, serve political campaigns etc.
Remember this video that circulated around social platforms, with Obama’s face and another person’s voice?
Looks very real, doesn’t it?
Filtering out fake information
People usually fall for fake information when there is limited information and when they are upheld by the majority. If fake news aligns with their political biases they tend to believe them even more. Most of the time, it is due to our own ignorance, lack of attention, misjudgement and miscommunication that we fall into the trap of false information. If any fake news is put in front of me, I’m sure I won’t be able to tell just by reading them. Here are a few measures we can take to find out if a news article is fake or not.
- Examine the source : Always check the source or author and look over if they are trustworthy, reliable and updated.
- Read beyond headlines : Headlines are designed to seize the attention of readers. They can be clickbait too. Hence, don’t solely rely on them and read the whole thing.
- Check the dates : Old news is repackaged as new information especially on social media. Ensure that the data is current and useful.
- Look for biases: Does the article appear to favor one point of view over another? You may not get the complete story from a biased article.
- Check the URLs : an .edu domain, followed by .co or “lo” is most likely a fraudulent or deceitful site.
- Examine the authenticity of a picture: A Google reverse image search might help you figure out where an image came from and what versions it has.
- Is it a satire/parody? : Satire and parody are sometimes mistaken for true news. Do some research before sharing them.
- Fact-checking sites and apps : A number of websites, extensions, software, and applications are dedicated to fact-check information provided by prominent publications. NewsGuard, Logically., factcheck.org, PolitiFact, Media bias / Fact Check, Fake News Detector and Snopes are some of the examples.
In a nutshell, not everything we come across internet is true. With the technology evolving every day, there is no doubt people may create more of these seamless deceitful contents and they may be served to us on our screens. However, as a responsible digital consumer, we can step up and choose to take these measures to filter out contents. By being aware and mindful about what we read and what we share, we can definitely help in breaking the chain of propaganda. Personally, these tips have proven to be helpful for me at times when I was unsure if any news was authentic or not, just like the one I mentioned in the beginning of this blog. Hope you find them helpful too.
