Dear reader,
This is going to be a short post but I want to convey that I’m feeling rather optimistic these days. This is because the global fight against Coronavirus is so…black and white. The villain—COVID-19—is clearly visible. The solution is also clear: social distancing, washing of hands, and eventually, a vaccine that will give us immunity. Already several countries are participating in vaccine trials.
It all seems so tame compared to the fight against ‘fake news’, misinformation, toxic propaganda and B.S.
In this fight, the villains are often without a clearly defined shape. No single solution seems to work all the time. There is no estimated timeline for when we bring down misinformation into acceptable levels. And toughest of all, we don’t even seem to have convinced everyone that there is a problem.
Unlike with lies, treatment for Coronavirus won’t run into resistance.
There’s a lot we don’t know about Coronavirus just yet. For example, we don’t yet know if a person will definitely be immune to it once they’ve been infected. But it seems clear that we will soon know either way.
At any rate, the treatment in most cases of Coronavirus seems to be the same as for the flu: rest, fluids, drugs that provide symptomatic relief and being on the lookout for worsening symptoms such as difficulty in breathing. In most cases, the body will do its own repairing.
It’s different with the fight against ‘fake news’.
The “virus of falsehood has proved alarmingly resistant to treatment,” says Matthew D’Ancona in his book Post Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back. And unlike with treatments for virus, the treatment for falsehoods sometimes strengthens the disease.
This is most evident in the so-called ‘backfire effect’: when you challenge someone’s deepest convictions, especially those that are rooted in false data, their beliefs only grow stronger. If you present them with evidence, they start questioning your motives.
Unlike with lies, a cure or preventive action for Coronavirus lies with evidence-based science.
One thing’s for sure. Any cure or vaccine for Coronavirus will be based on evidence of what is working and what is not.
But in the case of information disorder, “a virulent conspiracy theory can fend off even incontestable facts,” says D’Ancona. “Its popular strength depends not upon evidence, but upon feeling.”
So how then does one counter misapprehensions that are rooted in feeling? Not always with more facts. Rather, we can only win the war against truth but by appealing to people’s feelings.
In other words, we need newer narrative and newer stories.
I’m going to take this argument further in coming posts: on the importance of facts, the limitations of fact-checking, the importance of stories and so on.
p.s. It’s not like Coronavirus hasn’t spawned its own misinformation. We at BOOM FactCheck and other fact-checking organizations are in fact drowning in a sea of misinformation on every aspect of the virus. Yet, somehow, it feels like a winnable issue. And once humanity has figured out how to deal with Coronavirus, the misinformation surrounding it should also slow down to a trickle.
Image credit: Vektor Kunst iXimus