Partisanship Increases Vulnerability to Misinformation
Partisanship Increases Vulnerability to Misinformation
Maintaining balanced media coverage and freedom of speech are the most hotly contested debates in monitoring mis/disinformation.
According to this report from the Harvard Kennedy Misinformation Review 2021, the proliferation of conspiratorial narratives across political groups is asymmetric.
Overall, they observed that right-leaning users are slightly more likely to be partisan and to be vulnerable to misinformation. This means political censorship would be weighted against conservative views, opinions, politicians, and commentators.
If political censorship is weighted more heavily against one side this then creates a feedback loop whereby those on the right feel vilified as their views/opinions are suppressed, causing even greater social division.
So, how do you optimise for self-regulation rather than have regulation imposed upon you?
Studies by the MIT Sloan School of Management conducted experiments in 2021 showing that priming news consumers to evaluate truthfulness, accuracy, and consider the importance of responsible sharing before promoting on their feeds dramatically increased the likelihood of discernment.
Providing layers of transparency over online content is key, and similarly, so is educating civil society as to the dangers of promoting conspiratorial narratives and political rhetoric dressed up as fact.
Author: Greig Dowling
