Part of the story of the recovery from Hurricanes Helene and Milton has been the fake news stories and disinformation spread throughout social media. It’s becoming a common hazard of politics and nearly every election season, too.
You might be resigned to it, gotten used to it and perhaps even accepting of it since you can’t stop it all by yourself.
But why does such bad faith get spread around and believed so easily?
A lot of it is the emotional response society in general has to what you see online. The visual aspect of social media has an enormous hand in helping it spread.
“It’s raw. People are emotionally engaged with that content as we’re trying to figure out what’s going on,” said Cody Buntain, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information.
“This unfortunately, though, makes us vulnerable to the propagation of misinformation and for bad actors to exploit this vulnerability, because we don’t necessarily know what’s going on, and we’re trying to figure this out.”
That uncertainty is all someone needs to start pushing their agenda, whether it’s personal, political or financial. Just like a scam artist might use your uncertainty about something to tug at your wallet and rip you off financially, someone can use similar tactics to tug at your emotions and lead you to spread bad information, while consuming more of it.
Natural disasters like the recent hurricanes and the immediate aftermath are filled with uncertainty, and that makes it easy for bad actors to fill the void with information that isn’t true.
The same happened in the immediate days after the Boston Marathon bombing, the Sandy Hook shooting, and even during the pandemic — never mind all the political information people are seeking out right now too.
“These things are super common,” said Buntain.
“While it might be emotionally engaging, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s representative of everything that happens, or everything that has happened and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s true,” he added.
Most people, regardless of their political leaning, will acknowledge social media has become especially riddled with things that just aren’t true, especially in the world of politics where allegations follow candidates from all parties. So the supposed eyewitness coming to you from a disaster zone, or the supposed political insider, should probably be treated with some skepticism.
“When you see content that’s particularly disturbing or makes you very angry, a thing to keep in mind there is maybe making you angry was the point,” said Buntain. “This may not necessarily be legitimate content. It might be. It’s certainly plausible that it might be.”
“But when you start to see content that makes you angry, that tends to decrease your ability to do other things or think rationally about some of this content. Then you start to amplify it. Then you start to engage with it,” he added.
Triggering that response is often the real goal of social media algorithms. But if someone you know has been fooled, how do you convince them of that?
Because, as the saying goes, it can be harder to convince someone they’ve been fooled than it is to actually fool someone. But in some cases, at least deep down, truth might not be the real reason they’re re-sharing content that’s made up.
“They’re sharing it because it had some emotional resonance with them,” said Buntain. “And by just telling them that they … shared bad content, you’re sort of minimizing or ignoring the sort of emotional aspect that got them there, and then that’s not a good recipe for civil engagement around a particular topic.”
If someone you know personally has shared misinformation, he suggested reaching out directly instead of through social media responses, and approach them knowing you can’t discount the emotions that led to the post.
“Engage with the anxieties or fears they have, that this piece of content is triggering right now,” he advised. “If you’re on a particular platform, understand what that platform is doing to potentially take advantage of you, or the kinds of choices that platform has made about the kind of content that platform wants to push. Be mindful of where that information is coming from.”
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