Truth decayTech fixes cannot protect us from disinformation campaigns

More than technological fixes are needed to stop countries from spreading disinformation on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, according to two experts.

Policymakers and diplomats need to focus more on the psychology behind why citizens are so vulnerable to disinformation campaigns, said Erik Nisbet and Olga Kamenchuk of The Ohio State University.

“There is so much attention on how social media companies can adjust their algorithms and ban bots to stop the flood of false information,” said Nisbet, an associate professor of communication.

“But the human dimension is being left out. Why do people believe these inaccurate stories?”

Russia targeted American citizens during the 2016 election with posts on every major social media platform, according to reports produced for U.S. Senate investigators.

This is just one example of how some countries have distributed “fake news” to influence the citizens of rival nations, according to the researchers.

In a paper just released in The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Nisbet and Kamenchuk, a research associate at Ohio State’s Mershon Center for International Security Studies, discussed how to use psychology to battle these disinformation campaigns.

“Technology is only the tool to spread the disinformation,” Kamenchuk said.

“It is important to understand how Facebook and Twitter can improve what they do, but it may be even more important to understand how consumers react to disinformation and what we can do to protect them.”

The researchers, who are co-directors of the Mershon Center’s Eurasian Security and Governance Program, discussed three types of disinformation campaigns: identity-grievance, information gaslighting and incidental exposure.

Identity-grievance campaigns focus on exploiting real or perceived divisions within a country.

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