Information pollution and disinformation

Notes from the training day organized by the ODUCAL Communication Network “Information pollution: conceptual challenges and practical tensions in the fight against disinformation”, given by the doctor in communication Ingrid Bachmann Cáceres.

On October 25th, I participated in the workshop: “Information Pollution: Conceptual Challenges and Practical Tensions in the Fight Against Disinformation,” which was part of the 2023 Professional Development Program of the ODUCAL Communication Network. The workshop was led by Dr. Ingrid Bachmann Cáceres, a professor of communication at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

Dr. Bachmann began her presentation by breaking down several terms and concepts related to the problem of misinformation, I quote:

• Alternative facts and post-truth.
• Satire and news parodies.
• Clickbait
• Trash news.
• Conjectures, half-truths, rumors…

Posteriormente, hizo una precisión conceptual, diferenciando los siguientes términos que, tal y como ella explicó, son más precisos en inglés que en español. Para ello, se basó en las referencias bibliográficas aportadas por los autores Claire Wardle y Hossein Derakhshan (2017), a saber:

• 'Disinformation': The delivery of intentionally false information. The aim is to deceive ("disinform").
• 'Misinformation': The dissemination of erroneous or incomplete content, but without a malicious purpose.
• 'Malinformation': Reporting data that is not necessarily false, but whose dissemination does cause harm.

Furthermore, during her presentation, the professor outlined five consequences of exposure to disinformation, based on references from the LSE Truth, Trust & Technology Commission (2018) of the London School of Economics and Political Science. These are:

• Confusion: citizens are no longer certain about what is true and what is not.
• Cynicism: distrust is on the rise and there are fewer and fewer reliable sources.
• Fragmentation: the audience is divided into segments with their own narratives.
• Irresponsibility: the power to give meaning to things is not used transparently.
• Apathy: people disconnect from society and doubt democracy.

During his presentation, Bachmann also addressed the new information landscape, raising the following issues:

• The credibility of disinformation has been associated with psychological reinforcement processes.
• There is evidence of a lack of analytical thinking and media literacy.
• It influences the formation of false beliefs, the configuration of judgments or evaluations, and people's actual behavior.
• Exposure to misinformation does not necessarily translate into believing it, since erroneous beliefs can have various other origins.

It's not enough to simply debunk falsehoods and rumors; other actions must also be taken. She emphasized that it is possible to counteract disinformation, for which it is important to stay informed and act promptly. She highlighted a study she conducted with Sebastián Valenzuela (2021-2023), whose results show that fact-checking works. According to these results, "the group exposed to fact-checking increases its levels of information by an average of 9% compared to the group exposed only to disinformation."

Bachmann's presentation concluded with some recommendations on what can be done to counter disinformation. In that regard, he suggested the following:

• Educating the population: analytical thinking, in addition to media and digital literacy, are key for audiences to be able to recognize disinformation.
• Restoring journalistic authority: making processes and editorial decisions transparent, explaining more
• Correct, think, review, don't share: people trust other humans more than algorithms and bots.
• Understanding contexts and producing knowledge: disinformation does not operate the same everywhere.

Finally, it is important to highlight that there are diverse organizations and initiatives around the world focused on countering disinformation, which have already generated data that explain how disinformation operates in different contexts and scenarios.