The Scary Truth of Misinformation for Australian Politics
By Eliza Wilson
In case you have been living under a rock for the last month or so Australia is about to hold another federal election. It will occur on the 18thof May. Recently I came across an ABC article that reported on Facebook banning foreign political ads in the lead up to this election. My first thought was obviously, ‘WOW, can they do that?’ and secondly “why would they?”
As I read into it, the reason as to why this is going to occur was clear. To protect Australian voters from interference, Facebook will have banned ads bought from foreign entities. A US firm in collaboration with a French news agency have been reducing sensationalistic information through a fast checking service for Facebook in Australia. Ads with any sort of reference to a political agenda were banned the day after Scott Morrison announced the election date. This veto will continue until the election is over. Mia Garlick (Facebook’s director of policy in Australia) states:
Fake news in much of western media has been a disturbance to politics. This issue was highly present in the 2016 US federal elections. During this time it was believed that the spread of fake news on social media platforms influenced the voters of the election. Consequently it comes as no surprise that many experts in the field of social media have also praised this ban with the view that “disinformation groups…have an agenda to manipulate public sentiment and potentially the vote.”
In a world where many of us are left questioning what we can believe about politics this restriction aims to reduce manipulation of electoral votes. A journal article by Shin, Jian, Driscoll and Bar investigates the spread of misinformation on social media. A key point that they identify is that misinformation on online platforms is becoming an increasingly large issue. These researchers suggest that people are inclined to believe in behaviours that correlate with their current beliefs. Which means that if they see information that is not true but, in some way, corresponds with their personal views they will believe or trust this source of information.
During the 2016 US elections allegations surfaced in relation to Russia using Facebook to influence election results. Meddling of Russian content creators led to ads like the following to be displayed to the American public through social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter. These ads aimed to exaggerate controversial topics that were being discussed in America at the time. These topics included; gay rights, immigration and gun control.
It is difficult to know whether these ads did directly impact the voting results of the US election. However, Donald Trump claims that the Russians played no role in putting him in office. Allcott and Gentzkowin their journal article Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 electionarticle disagree with Trump. Regarding the US election in 2016, they believe that most people who see fake news stories actually believe what they see. These authors see another issue at play with this and that is the ability for information to be easily shared. To put this into perspective 60% of Australians are estimated to be active Facebook users. This is more than half of the population. Within this percentage there are people who are likely to be influenced by incorrect information.
Personally, I believe Australia is doing the right thing in preventing Australians from being exposed to information that is not necessarily correct in nature. This ban will allow for a more accurate vote. With our election coming up Australia see’s content manipulation to be a threat to Australian voters. All precautions have been made based on the rise of sensationalised news in the US election three years ago. Content manipulation and misinformation has the potential to influence the voting results of the Australian public. Therefore, it is important that whilst we uphold the democratic process that our country runs on, we also protect our voters from information that will interfere with the voting process.
