Truth decayThe Case for a “Disinformation CERN”
Democracies around the world are struggling with various forms of disinformation afflictions. But the current suite of policy prescriptions will fail because governments simply don’t know enough about the emerging digital information environment, according to Alicia Wanless, director of the Partnership for Countering Influence Operations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Speaking in a panel discussion how democracies can collaborate on disinformation at ASPI’s grey zone and disinformation masterclass last week, Wanless went on to say that what we really need is ‘a disinformation CERN’—in reference to the international particle physics research outfit, where countries pool their resources to operate the Hadron particle accelerator, study results and share findings. The scale and reach of the disinformation problem is so huge that only research cooperation of this kind can address the global shared threat to information systems.
Our democratic societies are doomed to decline if we don’t put forward major effects to arrest the effects of disinformation, said Wanless. Fellow panel member and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Elizabeth Braw, agreed that democracies are in the middle of a generalized disinformation crisis.
At the same time, incentives to act may be blunted as democracies become numb to a multitude of cascading political crises driven by disinformation. These are having a global-warming-type effect on our political and cultural ecosystems—disinformation is turning up the temperature and toxicity of public discourse, but it also perpetuates denialism about the problem of disinformation itself.
Wanless explained that there are two major areas of research shortfall that democracies need to address. The first is how disinformation flows around global, national, local and individual information landscapes, for example, among news, social media and private messaging apps.
The second gap is in our understanding of both its short- and long-term impacts. Do disinformation campaigns change election outcomes? What’s the relationship between disinformation and politically motivated violence? And what might be the effects on the health of political systems over months or years of disinformation? Wanless noted that from an academic standpoint, most theories of communication are stronger on accounting for transmission but very weak on effects.
In addition, there are yawning knowledge gaps on the effects of disinformation countermeasures. For example, said Wanless, there are very few credible studies on the effects of de-platforming disinformation spreaders. Does it help in limiting disinformation? Or do the perpetrators just move underground to more niche platforms, where followers can be further radicalized and exhorted to violence?
