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How can education play a role in combatting disinformation and promoting positive engagement online?
In our increasingly digital society, unregulated online spaces have become susceptible to abuse, especially with the rise of fake news. As democracies worldwide are threatened by the pervasiveness of networked disinformation, we are faced with the challenge of fighting this rapidly spreading invisible enemy. A solution explored during the Salzburg Global program “Civic and Civil Education: Identity, Belonging and Education in the 21st Century” is turning towards the power of education to combat this phenomenon.
Defined as “false information deliberately intended to mislead,” disinformation can “shape public opinion, influence political processes, and erode public confidence in institutions”. But where does disinformation take shape and form? A study revealed that “no technology has been weaponized at such an unprecedented global scale as social media”.
According to Mario Vasilescu, Salzburg Global Fellow and CEO of Readocracy, an award-winning platform that aims to bring integrity back to the internet, “If you were sitting down with a whiteboard and said, ‘How do we create a space that would make it as easy as possible for somebody to attain power through lies?’ You would come up with something like the current system.”
He elaborated that “social media is used to perpetuate misinformation and disinformation through the way it's structured. Social media is part of surveillance capitalism…and these platforms rely on making it as easy as possible to have maximum engagement—which means removing context, removing friction, and making it easy for us to endlessly consume and react quickly.” Mario warned that when we are incentivized to be hyper-reactive to information, this is when we tend to perpetuate information, no matter how true or false it is.
Containing our use of social media and the spread of disinformation requires structural and personal changes. Mario underscored the need for people to be more aware of the amount of time that they spend on social media, suggesting that “If you had a button that [appears] after [you reach a certain level of] screen [time] which says ‘tap to continue’... just that little change of behavior is enough to reduce the amount of time you spend [online].” He proposed that on an individual level, we can utilize tools for social media that make us reflect on our usage and build motivation to behave better. For example, this could be done by implementing incentive systems that take into account how informed or helpful someone is, rather than only their social status.
Through civic and civil education, citizens become equipped with information and learning opportunities to be self-sufficient and critical members of society. In her Salzburg Global Center for Education Transformation Lecture, Jessica Roberts, a faculty member of the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change, Salzburg Global Fellow, and assistant professor of communication studies at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, advocated for education’s ability to equip young people with the tools they need to resist disinformation.
Jessica believes that “civic and civil education are key pillars in fighting disinformation because students who've been educated about media systems, how to determine the quality of information, and how to evaluate different sources will become better at identifying disinformation.” By having the skills to identify and dismiss it, they can contribute to the fight against disinformation. She also highlighted the importance of fact-checking and teaching media literacy, as she believes there is a “need to go beyond just creating tools” and instead “make humans feel the need to use them”.
Central to Jessica's argument is the need to include the concept of “empathy” when dealing with disinformation. The ability to understand and share the feelings of other people through empathy is an important yet overlooked aspect of human connection amid the culture of online hate. During her lecture, Jessica advocated for a renewed emphasis on the emotional well-being and connectedness of online audiences and building up a community at a time when everybody is digitally connected.
Disinformation thrives on the distortion of the truth, and civic and civil education can take on the crucial role of equipping people with the capacity to distinguish fact from fiction. However, in this “fight” for the truth, human connection should remain pivotal in our analysis of this issue. As Jessica put it, “If people both feel more empathy for others and experience more empathy from others, they're more likely to be resilient to disinformation, misinformation, and junk news.”
The ways in which humans interact have been significantly transformed by technological innovation and the dominance of online platforms. As the rise of disinformation on social media has become a major problem, it is increasingly important to place a renewed focus on education in combatting disinformation and promoting positive engagement online.
Watch a full recording of the 2023 Salzburg Global Center for Education Transformation Lecture on "Empathy and Community as Antidotes to Misinformation" by Jessica Roberts below:
The Salzburg Global Fellows featured in this article attended the Salzburg Global Center for Education Transformation program on “Civic and Civil Education: Identity, Belonging and Education in the 21st Century”. Along with other Fellows from educational spaces worldwide, they gathered at Schloss Leopoldskron from November 14 to 19, 2023, to rethink the role that education can play in tackling issues like declining democracy, misinformation, and polarization, by considering how to support citizens with skills and behaviors to live harmoniously.
“Civic and Civil Education: Identity, Belonging and Education in the 21st Century” is part of the Education for Tomorrow’s World series, which informs new approaches to learning, skills, and inclusion for radically different societies.