On 8 March, we’ll go to the polls in Ireland to vote in a referendum on family and care. This isn’t a newsletter on how to vote or how I’m voting.
I’m writing this as I’m genuinely worried about the level of misinformation and in particular low-quality information around about the referendum. I’m also worried about how some confusion around the outcome of this referendum could be making people more vulnerable to sharing or encountering misinformation on social media without realising.
When I wrote Social Capital, I included a chapter on misinformation as it had become a large feature of life on social media during the pandemic. Working in The Journal newsroom as an assistant news editor, it was incredible to witness in real-time how online misinformation spread and how easy it was for people to get sucked in by it.
The Journal had long been factchecking and had introduced the ‘debunk’, a shorter form of factcheck article, in response to social media misinformation specifically. While the marriage equality and abortion referendums both saw misinformation spread online, things reached a peak during the Covid-19 pandemic.
We all remember the fake WhatsApp messages, the spread of doctored images, the official-seeming but heavily biased social accounts with tens of thousands of followers, the false claims, the online ringleaders. It was a very grim time.
Pandemic misinformation spread fast. Really fast. Here’s a quote from my book featuring Christine Bohan, who is Deputy Editor at The Journal:
At the very end of February 2020, the misinformation had clearly become the news story. Bohan set up a WhatsApp account so people could send on concerning messages they had received to be fact-checked. The account was set up on a Friday. By Sunday there were 800 messages waiting on the phone. ‘I remember realizing: this is in Ireland now. This is here, we need to be concerned,’ says Bohan.
But not everyone spreading it realised what they were doing, as Aoife Gallagher, who wrote the excellent book Web of Lies (about conspiracy theorists online), explained:
It was easy to fill the vacuum around Covid-19 information with rumours and speculation. ‘A lot of it wasn’t nefarious. It wasn’t coming from a really bad place,’ she says of people sharing false messages and posts. ‘It was coming from people just trying to figure out what the hell was going on.’
Looking to the future, things appeared dodgy:
… Christine Bohan thinks it’s likely some of the conspiracy figureheads will move into political issues, and even run for election. She says the popularity of the Covid sceptic and conspiracy pages is concerning, because it shows how many people don’t trust the media, or don’t trust what authorities say to them.
‘The only thing that is really clear is that these communities will not go away,’ says Ciarán O’Connor [from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.]. ‘But we have to remember, these conspiracies are such a small pocket, but they’re very loud. And they can be potentially harmful for people if they are spreading wilfully wrong things.’
Since then, as the experts predicted, these Covid conspiracy or misinformation pages have not gone away - they’ve just pivoted. As we’ve seen in the past year, misinformation has spread across a lot of major topics, like immigration, and had real-life effects.
Today, I’d even say that I feel things look more bleak now than they looked two years ago.
Right now it can be even harder for people to figure out what’s misinformation, what’s low-quality information with an agenda, and what’s high-quality, useful information.
Concerns and fears
Yesterday, I looked up an Instagram page I’d seen mentioned online. I looked at it while not logged in, and noticed a few things which really concerned me. (The page was advocating a ‘no/no’ vote in the referendum - that’s not the issue.)
Its previous content included posts from during the pandemic lockdowns, such as anti-vaccine posts. When Instagram recommended similar pages to me, one of those was run by a prominent anti-immigration far-right ‘activist’, and other similar pages. It clearly had a particular agenda which tied in with right-leaning beliefs at the moment around things like the Hate Speech Bill and asylum accommodation, and its content included anti-immigration rhetoric and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, albeit somewhat disguised. To me, the page clearly had an agenda, which then coloured how I saw how it presented its information.
But I could see how easy it would be not to spot this. I had to do some digging - I had to click into posts and highlights, know who specific people in far-right and conspiracy communities were, and bring all my previous experience together to help me build a picture of what this page’s agenda was.
I could see why people who did not agree with all of its stances and yet shared its view on the referendum would share its content. It is easy when you’re faced with one image from a random page, or one post, to not notice that it comes from a person or organisation with an agenda. It’s easy to not realise this agenda might mean the information the page is sharing is not of high quality, and could be heavily biased to the point it might distort facts.
Of course, you might agree with everything on the page. But it raised several red flags for me in terms of the quality of its content, the underlying beliefs of the person who runs it, and the veracity of the facts on it. There was no indication of who the person was and what their knowledge or experience was that made their information trustworthy.
After all I’ve seen, read, and factchecked, I would not trust that page to give me high quality or unbiased (or even relatively unbiased) information. But I know how sneaky misinformation is and why someone might not spot the page’s agenda.
Confusion
Anecdotally, most people I’ve spoken to about this referendum have found it confusing. This is less than ideal on a few levels. But for the purposes of this newsletter: as we saw with the pandemic, confusion leads people to search for answers, and they can find these answers in places where misinformation is being shared. Those with agendas who want to manipulate people know that they can take advantage of confusion, too.
When we’re confused, we turn to people for answers. We can be more prone to reading or sharing information from pages which confirm our own beliefs, without checking to see if they have an agenda. We can be unwittingly influenced by people who are not sharing quality information with us.
Here are some tips for if you want to spot misinformation or low-quality information when you’re looking for referendum information online (outside of legitimate sources like the Electoral Commission).
They’re mainly questions to ask yourself, because this is about thinking critically and deeply about the information you are presented with online (and in real life!).
Ask uncomfortable questions. Get nosy. Ask about agendas, interrogate bias - others’ and your own - and don’t take everything at face value. See yourself as a detective. Get digging.
Ask: Who’s behind this?
Who is behind this page/post/infographic/soundbite?
Who runs the social media page - do they give information on who they are?
What have they previously posted on their page? What are their areas of knowledge? Is their opinion rooted in experience/study or opinion?
Have they been factchecked before?
Do you trust that you have enough information on this person - or are there gaps?
If it’s a politician or campaign group: what are their stances on other topics that you feel strongly about? What is their record on the previous referendums? Have they ever been factchecked? Do you agree with their stances on topics that are meaningful to you?
Ask: What’s the source?
Where does the data or statistics they’re sharing come from? Find the original source. Then ask: is this source legitimate?
What’s the source of the claims they are making? How do you know these claims are true?
Some misinformation sites will disguise themselves as news sites. See if the site or source has been factchecked before; find out who runs it and if the people who run it have a specific agenda.
Ask: Is is true?
Do you know if this information is true?
Is this an opinion being presented as fact?
This is something you’ll frequently see online. We can all have opinions - it doesn’t mean what we’re saying is true.
Ask: What’s the context of this video/image?
If a video clip is shared: is the video clip edited? Can you see the full context of the clip? Who is speaking in the clip? What show is it taken from?
If it’s an image, is it manipulated? Try a reverse Google image search to see where else it has appeared, and how it has been used previously.
If it’s a screengrab from a report or article, find the original source. Find out about the website/report/article it’s taken from.
Ask: What’s the agenda?
Does this person/page/organisation have an agenda? What is their stance on major issues like immigration and LGBTQ+ rights (or other issues that are meaningful to you)? Do you agree with that stance?
How could their agenda or stance affect how they present information to you?
Is their agenda leading to them introducing edge cases or unlikely scenarios to try and convince you to vote a certain way?
Ask: How am I feeling?
Is the content being posted or shared highly emotive, or trying to make you feel strong emotions?
Do you feel strongly because you don’t agree with what’s being said (which is the nature of any referendum - of course you aren’t going to agree with everything!) or because this person/page is suggesting if you vote one way something extreme will happen?
Misinformation is often highly manipulative and trying to play on your fears. That’s not to say we shouldn’t have strong feelings about something as serious as a referendum. We should.
But is the content you’re reading playing on your emotions? Is it fortune-telling in a way that cannot be verified right now? Can you find out more about its claims from trusted sources?
Also:
Read widely. Read as many viewpoints as you can, while being mindful of the source. Don’t just read people you always agree with - this helps you form a broader picture of the issues at hand.
When reading opinion pieces, take time to look up the writer of the piece, regardless of the outlet they’re published by (I say that as someone who writes opinion pieces). The more info you have, the better.
The Journal has a Factcheck page that checks Irish and international claims. Sites like Snopes and Factcheck.org check mainly US/international claims, so you’re unlikely to find the referendum mentioned, but they’re helpful in general.
I wish I could give all the answers to this and tell you clearly how to avoid misinformation. But this area is a really difficult one.
The main thing I can say is to keep asking questions.
Be cynical, check sources, and figure out agendas.
Here’s some more on spotting misinformation:
Really useful, thanks Aoife, happy to have something practical and knowledgeable I can share about this!
Aoife I just googled “referendum disinformation” now to see if anyone was talking about it, as I really believe this was no ordinary No vote. It was No/No disinformation vote on top of a regular No/No vote. It is really alarming and I wish more people were talking about. Today I’ve heard of a Facebook group where it was said that “traffickers could avail of the durable relationship provision to claim a durable relationship with their victims” - QAnon level scaremongering. And another Facebook group where single mothers were voting no because they’d be told their social welfare payments would be revoked and guardianship given to their child’s father if a Yes vote won. Feeling very despondent about the result and where we are headed, as we face into European and local elections soon.