Today, as the world struggles to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, the integrity of information and public messaging can be a case of life or death. Yet, we see on a daily basis content that questions vaccines or the reality of the corona virus itself.

Ultimately, this creates doubt and undermines efforts to deal with what is a global crisis. Many of us will have experienced misinformation leaking into our networks through family or friends, intending to create enough doubt and confusion to pull people from the trust they had in their institutions.

Misinformation is false information intended for unsuspecting or unsophisticated recipients. In some cases, the motive behind misinformation lies in advertising revenue, but worryingly, in the majority of others, the motivation is ideological, destructive and shrouded in elaborate conspiracy theories. Many people contribute to the spread of this misinformation unaware that it is a tool used to create disruptive noise that destroys objective truth.

A 2018 study by three scholars at MIT found that false news stories are 70% more likely to be shared than the truth. In political discourse, the occurrence of misinformation, which was once seen as a political anomaly in the West, has now become a regular occurrence for many of us online.

The growth of our social media platforms has hugely contributed to the spread of online misinformation. Our platforms have provided a supportive environment for manipulators to share fake news and false information while reaping the benefits under the deep cover of the internet. Social media is its vehicle, as many of us look to our platforms to present us with news stories from an array of sources.

Admittedly, being able to receive instant information directly from Twitter, Facebook, or WhatsApp is appealing for those who wish to stay informed, but these platforms have been rightfully criticized for enabling the spread of misinformation with little in the form of checks and balances.

Traditionally, print media cultivated a reputation with their readers, which relied on fact checking information before it was published. Today, our social media news is presented to us regardless of quality and reliability; there is no filtering system, neither are there editors acting as gatekeepers to ascertain the validity of information.

Clearly, the social media machine was never built to reliably inform its audiences but to keep the user engaged through an endless supply of content. In fact, information overload has brought us to a point where misinformation seeps into our knowledge sharing and becomes difficult for many to differentiate between the truth and outright deliberate manipulation.

Fake news that we hear so often these days has become more than shock headlines that simply bring in clicks and advertising revenue; it has become politically driven to influence self-detrimental behaviour.

The 2016 US election was a catalyst for the exponential growth of modern misinformation campaigns. A study from researchers at Ohio State University found that fake news played a significant role in depressing Hillary Clinton’s support, which led to Donald Trump’s victory, notwithstanding the result of the popular vote. The attack was attributed to enemies of the state, as experts in producing fake content and foreign agents combined to target the most vulnerable groups with false information. Social media users over the age of 65 proved to be particularly susceptible to misinformation, sharing nearly seven times as many false news articles as the younger age groups. It proved to be a lesson in how powerful political misinformation can be, and subsequently the New York Times reports that at least 70 countries have employed political misinformation campaigns in the last two years.

Covid-19 will not be overcome without the investment of every citizen, and that is what makes the existence of misinformation against the pandemic even more dangerous. When we engage content that questions vaccines or the pandemic, these are directed efforts to create doubt against what should be an objective global health crisis. Our cyber security services need to figure out the origins of the misinformation we encounter and deal with it, but there is plenty we can do at an individual level to ensure we do not spread misinformation any further. In my view, three things need to be done.

First, we need to be clear that we understand how misinformation works. Just as vaccines introduce small doses of a harmful substance to learn how to defend it, it is beneficial to identify what misinformation and fake news look like so that they can be avoided.

Misinformation tends to come from unclear sources both in authors and references, so it is best to be extremely critical over dubious authors and other origins of information.

Before sharing the content compare it with previous examples of misinformation and employ critical thinking to study its validity.  

Second, it is essential that we confront misinformation firmly within our social media groups.

With the vast amount of content we share daily, there is plenty of misinformation present from some of our family and friends who are unaware of its dangers.  It is imperative to hastily denounce it and to educate those who share misinformation unknowingly on the detrimental effect it can have. 

Finally, we all need to think twice before sharing anything and examine the knock-on effect of what sharing one piece of information can have on the mindset of another person. 

Even the smallest pieces of information can have a huge influence on behaviour, especially as the spread of misinformation relies on the closeness of networks to add extra validation towards false information. 

It is also useful to ask yourself whether you know enough about a subject to endorse its worth before a share or a retweet. 

As we aim to continue preserving our development, it is imperative that we provide real value to our information. Defeating the pandemic is reliant on defeating the info-demic, and there is much we can do to stop its spread before things get out of control. Protecting the integrity of our information is a critical investment in securing our development as a knowledge-led society.