Political Disinformation and Misinformation: A Primer w/ Adam Berinsky

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Elon Musk has bought Twitter. Yesterday, national security testimony before Congress shared their concern about TikTok data collection and influence. Fox News is facing the Dominion lawsuit for promoting Donald Trump's big election lie. Tucker Carlson is working to distract from that with his selectively edited January 6th footage. And all the while, a persistent drumbeat of disinformation and misinformation on various social media sites. Joining us right now is fair to say a national expert on disinformation and misinformation, professor of political science at mit, Adam Barinsky, joins us right now to talk about disinformation and maybe what we might do about it. Professor, thanks so much for being with us.

Thanks for having me.

When did you start tracking disinformation and misinformation as a political topic? Always. Always something you cared about. Is this more of an emerging concern?

Well, I started being interested in the summer of 2009 when rumors started circulating about Obama's birthplace, about death panels. So, you know, it's something I've been interested personally for almost 15 years. But, you know, misinformation has been around the American political scene throughout our history. But clearly there's been a lot more interest among the public since the 2016 election. Sort of the, the Russian attempts at fostering disinformation in the country and sort of the prevalence of beliefs and rumors and, and other sorts of crazy stories about American politics for people who hear

both words and maybe conflate them, what's the difference? What's the difference between disinformation and misinformation?

Okay, so misinformation, we say, as for the academic definition, is basically it's claims that are unsupported by the balance of publicly available evidence. Disinformation gets at the intent of the sender. So a piece of misinformation, right, Saying that's not supported by the evidence. If as the sender, the person who's spreading this information, I know it's wrong, but I'm trying to trick you, right? And yet you believe something that's not true. We would call that disinformation. Now, the tricky thing is that I could be someone who sends a message to you as disinformation. You might think it's true. And so it's no longer disinformation, it's misinformation. But at the end of the day, it's the same result that bad information is getting out into the information ecosystem.

And so often false memes are passed along, if not innocently, at least somewhat ignorantly. But that doesn't mean they started that way.

Exactly Right. So, you know, sort of that we think about the. The initial actor, the person who put that information out there had a purpose, but they're basically kind of a banking on the goodwill of folks who just generally spread information, things they hear, things they see in their social media feeds. So actually, it's this incidental exposure to misinformation that can be very dangerous, where people are not necessarily actively seeking it. But, you know, a friend of a friend on Facebook, you know, you see something on TikTok that pops up in your feed that is spread. Initially it's disinformation, but then people spread it around, becomes misinformation, and you're exposed to that just as an average citizen.

Is there a way and how do you track sort of the state of play, the status, the state of the union with regard to disinformation and misinformation? What do you count? And have we seen a rise of it in a way that's measurable?

Yeah, that's a very tricky question. You know, so being an academic, you know, say, like, have it both ways. You said like on the one hand, on the other. But what makes it very tricky is that in order to say that something is misinformation, someone there needs to be a referee of sorts. So someone who's going to say this is true and this is false. And in the current political climate, it's very difficult to get agreement on that. So, you know, it's interesting, if you ask people, have you seen misinformation on social media, just like a general public opinion poll, a lot of times people will say, yes, they have. And you ask them what that is. And in sort of, more often than not, it's stuff that they don't like. Right. So it's not that they think necessarily that that objectively it's misinformation, but in their mind it's seen as misinformation. So it makes it very difficult to track. And that's sort of why, you know, sort of thinking about, if we're looking at the rise of misinformation online over time, we want to look at things that are verifiably false. Right. So things like, you know, Obama was not born in Hawaii in the 1960s, was in fact born in a foreign country, not eligible to be president, cases of voter fraud that are claimed by Donald Trump and his associates. Right. So that things that there is no. There is no actual evidence for. And in terms of tracking that over time, you know, Sort of. There seems to have been an increase over the last, you know, sort of decade or so. But it's very difficult because that, the, because of that same measurement problem, trying to figure out what is misinformation in a way that everyone can agree this is misinformation.

I don't think I need to ask why it matters. I think we understand that in a democracy, if we're going to make decisions together, we have to have a shared basis of facts. We can differ in opinion, but we at least have to have a shared basis of reality. And I think we also see the power of it. You mentioned Donald Trump's and others promotion of the Obama birthplace lie that was key to Donald Trump's political lie. So I don't think I'd ask you why it matters so much. In what sectors do you see it most pernicious, most prevalent? Where should we watching most?

Yeah, I mean, I think that sort of thinking about what the effects are as you say that, you know, that it is in some sense the effects are obvious. But we think what I worry about is sort of misinformation that targets the system as a whole. Right. So thinking about these cases, about misinformation about the 2020 election and fraud or not fraud. Right. That what matters is the fact that these stories are out there that are getting people to, even if they don't fully accept those rumors or even if they mostly reject them, this questioning of whether or not the political system is. And so this brings us back to the question of disinformation. So, like, what was the Russian intent in the 2016 election?

Right.

Was it to get Donald Trump elected president? Not directly. I think that, you know, all indications are that the Russian government thought that Clinton would win, but given that they thought Clinton was. Would win, they wanted to basically undermine her presidency before it started. Right. So kind of getting stories out there. It doesn't matter what you believe. I just want you to distrust authority. Right. So it doesn't matter if you think understood there's election. I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, I get that part. And the, and quoting the HBO series Chernobyl that opened what is the cost of lies? It is not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is if we hear enough lies, then we will no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? I do want to ask you before the break, what do we do then? What are the best Panassia. What was the best diagnosis prescription for addressing this diagnosis?

Yeah, I mean, well, that's you know, sort of. I always say that, you know, I've spent about 15 years studying this, trying to figure out what are the roots of misinformation, how can we correct it? And I've made a lot more progress on the first question than the second, which is true. I think of a lot of scholars, but there are things that can be done. There's, you know, sort of strategies that can involve that you don't necessarily need to say, is this true or false? But getting people to think more critically about the information that they encounter and giving them the skills and the ability to do that.

So when Tom says, tag, you're it. Each of us have to be watchful eyes, ears and brains about misinformation. I also think human community, that we can verify matters. Power of the human voice. Thank you, Professor. Stick with us for a moment, everybody.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

So, wanted to follow up. What are the best sources that you find? I track, I think, something called Bot Sentinel, which gives me a little ping on what messages are happening that seem to be retweeted by truthless, by problematic accounts. Where are the places to look if people want to step up their critical thinking game, if people want to sort of be a little better. I know our brains, I think maybe we're naturally getting this stuff.

We're like.

I now even see sometimes fewer memes that are spread by even family members of mine. I think people are realizing, kind of training ourselves on this. But any places to track, any places to go, or any tips to offer our listeners.

Your sound broke up a little, but I think you're asking about sort of like, what are the resources to go to. To look at? Is that right?

Please.

Yeah, yeah. No. So I think so in terms of sort of tracking, there's some great academic institutions. So there's the. There's a social media lab at NYU that tracks a lot of sort of foreign and domestic misinformation. I think that the tricky thing is that a lot of the data that you need to track this information is held by social media companies, and it's very difficult to get access to that. So I think sort of Twitter has something that people use to track misinformation, but sort of the kind of shutdown academic access. So that makes it more difficult. But I think another resource is there's a great team at Northeastern that is also tracking misinformation. So I look to the academics for that.

Yeah. And maybe this goes beyond your remit, but any reflections on the Tucker Carlson treatment of the January 6 footage, which is its own sort of brand of communication with kind of selective editing of footage that was shared with, you know, sort of one journalistic team, if I

can call them a journalistic team, you know, it is, you know, so there's a lot of, you know, so we talk a lot about social media and the role of misinformation, but, you know, sort of still traditional media, you know, Fox News still plays a huge role in that. So I think in terms of the reach, you know, I think that that is, that is huge. And as you say, Right. If you can basically edit things to say not whatever you want, but to present a misleading characterization. So that is troubling. Right. And Tucker Carlson has a huge audience. And so I think again, even if it's not the people who are directly watching Tucker Carlson, but kind of that these edited clips start circulating, it's that incidental exposure that can play a big role.

Well, doctor, so appreciate your help. Anything you want to plug before we go?

I have a book coming out in August called Political Rumors. And so my publisher would want me to say that Political Rumors, the book

coming out in August by Adam Burns and Professor, is it essentially just this topic that we've been talking about? I mean, I don't mean just as to diminish, but as precisely or yeah, give us the core thesis.

Yeah. So basically looking at who believes these political rumors. I'm a political scientist, so I'm most interested in that. But everything's become politicized. So kind of looking at who believes rumors and why and what can we do to correct them. And that's the tricky part. But there's lots of strategies that there's no one magic bullet. But there's a lot of good social science research out there that's going to help us at least fight the problem.

Democracy Nerds recorded in sunny Portland, Oregon, produced by Kyle Curtis. Thanks also to technical producer Sig Seliger. Logo designed by kat Buckley@kbuckleygraphics.com I am Jefferson Smith. Thank you so much for listening. You can rate and review. Hope you will. And follow Democracy Nerd on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Past episodes of the show Democracy Nerd can be found online at democracynerd Us. Go America. Thank you.

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