Two future scenarios for disinformation in the media

THE TIME has come for social media companies to be held to the same standards and practices as traditional media. Of course, the idea of an information gatekeeper is problematic, but it may be necessary to limit the spread of intentionally misleading information on the internet. Ultimately, Twitter and Facebook are some of the largest publishers in the world; it is time that they are held accountable for harmful information.

This opinion, which has formed after months of research, stems from my understanding of disinformation and its effects on individual users. This research project and website are a child of chaos, born in a time of confusion and disarray. Since the start of this research, so much has changed in the world. At the time of writing, a COVID-19 vaccine appears to be on the horizon, but still, infection rates are rising across the world – especially in the United States.

Scenario One: An even murkier media landscape

Twitter has been incredibly useful in allowing people to connect, share information, and discuss pandemic-related topics in real-time. The result of the keyword search using hashtagify.me reveal that some of the Twitter conversations relating to COVID-19 include conspiracy theories, mainly with the popularity of the hashtags Hydroxychloroquine and the far-right conspiracy theorist group QAnon.

“[QAnon] a nutty conspiracy theory in which a heroic Trump is prosecuting a secret war against a satanic paedophile ring of lefty elites”

— Farhad Manjoo

The conspiracy theorist group QAnon was an outlier for negative and hostile/violent sentiment. An article by New York Times opinion columnist Ham Manjoo explained how YouTube and Facebook have made efforts to quash QAnon conspiracies, as it has been linked to real-world violence and terrorism. He offers that QAnon is “a nutty conspiracy theory in which a heroic Trump is prosecuting a secret war against a satanic paedophile ring of lefty elites.”

The prevalence of “nutty” conspiracy theorist groups on social media leaves unsuspecting individuals vulnerable to their disinformation and hate messages. This future of social media is accelerating at a fast rate; demonstrating how necessary fact-checking software and community liability will be in stopping the spread of false information. Of course, efforts to hold media giants accountable for disinformation and violence have fallen on deaf ears, the current COVID-19 crisis is a testament to that.

Scenario Two: Artificially intelligent meddling

The most unexpected find within this study was the identification of 13 bot accounts among a sample of the top 50 users. Throughout the current literature on disinformation and conspiracy theories during crises, very little is explored on the use of bots to spread misleading information on social media.

Research by scholars in Harvard's Kennedy School explain four functions of bots on social media: To inflate hashtag numbers, spread propaganda, inflate political and social discourse, and aggregate/boost content. Their research coincides with the results of my study – some disinformation and conspiracy theories are related to political anxieties and dangerous health information to spread false narratives.

“two [bots] shared a deep fake of North Korean and Russian leaders Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin explaining how America is no longer a democracy. ”

The popularity of these bots plays a fundamental role in how much false information is getting spread; the three bot accounts with attached URLs had the highest mentions, tags, and retweets within the entire network. Therefore, it can be concluded that these bots are creating an eco-chamber of disinformation and conspiracy theories intending to spread to large amounts of people in a short amount of time.

Arguably, the presence of these bot accounts will continue to rise as artificial intelligence and technology develops.

Disinformation and media manipulation scholars are now presented with a unique challenge: How can social media users be warned about the potential harms of disinformation online? One thing is for certain, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the dark underbelly of social media, and the more research that is conducted on this topic can only be considered the first steps in solving the issue.

By holding social media companies accountable for the actions of their users – then maybe, just maybe, problematic actors will no longer have a voice.