2017-35: Misperception, Mistrust & Misinformation
The online public is frequently wrong, sometimes very wrong, about key global issues and features of the population in their country. This is the finding of Ipsos MORI’s latest Perils of Perception survey across 38 countries. Great Britain fares better than most, but we’re still some way behind the leading (best-informed) nations, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The worst on Ipsos’ Misperception Index are South Africa, Brazil and The Philippines.
In the run up to the Referendum last year, the MD of the Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute , Bobby Duffy, laid the blame for some of the misunderstanding at the door of politicians. In ‘ Wondering why Boris Johnson keeps mentioning bendy bananas & Brexit ’, Duffy raised questions about why people were getting their facts so confused. “Despite the best efforts of many organisations to present a fair reflection of sound evidence,” he opined, “the picture we’re getting is that the facts are messy and contested. Some things are known and relatively undisputed… But many of us are very wrong on the biggest issues, those that we say will settle our vote: immigration, the economy and sovereignty… First, we need to recognise that people overestimate what they worry about, as much as worry about what they overestimate [for example] we overestimate EU immigration but underestimate our reliance on investment from EU countries… Second, we know that we remember a vivid story much more than dry statistics. Bendy bananas and other extreme anecdotes stick — it’s not a media effect, it’s how we’re wired to think. So it’s not nearly as ludicrous as it may seem for Boris Johnson to come back to bananas — repeatedly.”
Mind Control
This issue of not hearing or believing what other say was explored a couple of days ago by Simon McCarthy-Jones in The Conversation. In social networking sites may be controlling your mind, he asks: “How can you live the life you want to, avoiding the distractions and manipulations of others?” and concludes that to do so we need to know ourselves much better. “Sadly, we are often bad at this,” he observes “By contrast, others know us increasingly well. Our intelligence, sexual orientation — and much more — can be computed from our Facebook likes. Machines, using data from our digital footprint, are better judges of our personality than our friends and family. Soon, artificial intelligence, using our social network data, will know even more. The 21st-century challenge will be how to live when others know us better than we know ourselves… There are industries dedicated to capturing and selling our attention — and the best bait is social networking. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have drawn us closer round the campfire of our shared humanity. Yet, they come with costs, both personal and political. Users must decide if the benefits of these sites outweigh their costs.” Humans, he opines, “have a fundamental need to belong and a fundamental desire for social status. As a result, our brains treat information about ourselves like a reward. When our behaviour is rewarded with things such as food or money, our brain’s ‘valuation system’ activates. Much of this system is also activated when we encounter self-relevant information. Such information is hence given great weight.”
McCarthy-Jones makes a number of interesting suggestions as to how we might benefit but not get consumed: “Companies could redesign their sites to mitigate the risk of addiction. They could use opt-out default settings for features that encourage addiction and make it easier for people to self-regulate their usage. However, some claim that asking tech firms ‘to be less good at what they do feels like a ridiculous ask’. So government regulation may be needed, perhaps similar to that used with the tobacco industry. Users could also consider whether personal reasons are making them vulnerable to problematic use. Factors that predict excessive use include an increased tendency to experience negative emotions, being unable to cope well with everyday problems, a need for self-promotion, loneliness and fear of missing out.” Users could also empower themselves. “It is already possible to limit time on these sites using apps such as Freedom, Moment and StayFocusd.”
Tacking ‘Useful Enemies’
Interesting to see that the BBC has just launched a new initiative to tackle some of these problems: it is outlined by its Media Editor, Amol Rajan, who sees fake news as “a useful enemy” for people like Trump, who use it to “motivate his base, obstruct scrutiny of his policies, and potentially undermine his opponents.” It also helps “ambitious politicians keen to flaunt their digital knowledge and boost their profile, the fake news phenomenon is a handy option,” and for “digital firms keen to display a social conscience, fake news provides an opportunity to clarify their purpose — ‘we're technology companies, not media companies’… even if their platforms are zones in which foreign autocrats interfere in domestic matters. And for the mainstream media, which is suffering from a crisis of trust, seeing traditional business models turn into air… the comparison with fake news is a way of making the case for professional journalists who go after the truth.”
The BBC initiative is focusing on young people and involves online mentoring and school visits to “promote better judgement about misinformation online… Teenagers have their news chosen for them by friends on some social media platforms, or chosen by those lovely people at Snapchat, according to their social preferences. They snack on news throughout the day (and) occasionally dip into the permanent stream of information on their mobiles and feeds.” To resist the obvious dangers, Rajan says, “requires knowledge (of the actual state of the world), intellectual tools (scrutiny to determine truth from falsehood), and courage (to call out liars). This trinity, when combined, produces news literacy — and it is this, rather than fake news itself, that the BBC's new initiative is aiming to promote.”
The Question of Trust
And finally there’s the question of trust… If you couple the above findings with those of the Edelman Trust Barometer(published earlier this year) an alarming picture emerges — perhaps another indication of how, as the world grows darker, we have become more and more absorbed in our own (safe) eco-chambers. The Barometer exposes just what little trust people today have in business, government, NGOs and the media; and with this collapse of trust, the majority of those polled: “now lack full belief that the overall system is working for them. In this climate, people’s societal and economic concerns, including globalization, the pace of innovation and eroding social values, turn into fears, spurring the rise of populist actions now playing out in several Western-style democracies.” Its conclusion is that: “To rebuild trust and restore faith in the system, institutions must step outside of their traditional roles and work toward a new, more integrated operating model that puts people — and the addressing of their fears — at the center of everything they do.” And that’s quite a challenge!
