A Guide to Misinformation in The Upcoming Elections
It’s thought that more people might vote during 2024 than any other year in history.? As countries including India, Mexico, the US, and most likely the UK prepare for upcoming elections, the threat of online misinformation or disinformation is widespread.
Disinformation not only undermines trust but also risks causing individuals to distrust all credible sources of information, potentially resulting in severely uninformed decision-making. False information and deliberate misinformation is nothing new in politics, but social media has escalated the issue with the term “fake news” entering the public lexicon in the years that followed Donald Trump’s 2016 US presidential election victory.
Recent advances in technology look set to make discerning the real from unreal even harder.
Deepfakes: The Art of Deception
One way disinformation manifests is through the use of deepfakes where media has been digitally manipulated to replace one person’s likeness convincingly with that of another. While they have garnered attention in recent news cycles, deepfakes didn’t just emerge from nowhere, rather, they’re the culmination of substantial progress in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). In January, voters in New Hampshire received a robocall from President Biden urging residents not to vote.
Audio deep fakes such as these have emerged due to the cheap and effective AI tools available today. These deepfakes, powered by AI have become a powerful tool in the hands of those seeking to manipulate public opinion, and as election campaigns heat up, the risk of deep fakes influencing public perception is higher than ever.?
Social Media: TikTok and Facebook in the Spotlight
Social media platforms also play a significant role in shaping and amplifying public opinion during elections. TikTok, with its rapidly growing user base, and Facebook, a longstanding giant in the social media landscape, can be a force for good or a breeding ground for misinformation. The algorithms that govern content visibility may inadvertently promote false information, so where possible users need to critically evaluate the content they view, cross-referencing information and seeking out credible sources.?
Through AI, the generation of deceptive news headlines can be automated and tailored with minimal human involvement. For instance, micro-targeting, the method of tailoring messages to individuals using digital trace data such as Facebook likes, has been a concern in previous elections. Part of the issue stems from the fact that what was once labour-intensive and therefore costly has become inexpensive and easily accessible, with fewer barriers to entry.
In response to this, Google, Meta, TikTok and X have all introduced rules banning co-ordinated covert influence campaigns? and misinformation about voting and voter suppression. Google will soon require that political ads on its platforms let people know when images and audio have been created using AI, while Meta recently announced it will begin labelling AI-generated images on Facebook and Instagram amid a rise of AI-generated images shared on its platforms and a global rise in content spreading misinformation.?
However, Meta has also acknowledged that it's not always possible to identify all AI-generated content, despite efforts to combat this problem. The company is exploring various options, such as implementing watermarks and metadata, to prevent users from removing invisible markers that indicate content is AI-generated. This highlights the complexity of the issue and the difficulty in maintaining consistency across social platforms.
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So, what can we do as individuals to try and stay one step ahead of misinformation in the digital era?
Check the Source:
Cross-Reference Information:
Be Wary of Clickbait:
Fact-Checking Tools:
Educate Yourself on Deep Fakes:
Data, tech and the outdoors
8 个月Feels like there's another step an individual can take - talk to your local candidates IN PERSON. Cut out the technological interface and speak to real people. Obviously it can be difficult to achieve and takes a bit of effort, certainly more than just watchng the next clip on your phone, but we need to remember that we are PEOPLE, not merely consumers of content.
Human-Centric Data Engineering, Strategy and Analytics Leader, Talker of Mental Health & Neurodiversity, Titan in tweed, Loser of pens and endorser of all things witty.
8 个月My wife has just completed a big piece for her Info Science MSc on this very topic. Granted it was talking about kids vs adults, but it's fair. The worry is how so many people basically close their eyes and ears once school is over and never want to learn beyond that. It makes them painfully suseptible to all sorts of dis and misinformation, and no matter how much data you show them to the contrary... it just re-enforces their position as they double down. Combine that with LLM's churning out memes and the ilk? We've got a reciepe for catastrophe on so many fronts.