Misunderstandings and lies

Now often referred to as misinformation and disinformation - let's use some plain language and speak of misunderstandings and lies and how they affect public perceptions on community issues.

This post follows my post "Dwindling majority", exploring the often exploited misunderstanding that the 2023 Referendum indicates that 9.4m voters oppose voice, truth and treaty. A comment on that post wondered whether this had a lot to do with media coverage and fear mongering? I suspect that this misunderstanding arises for a range of reasons and want to explore some of them here, as they speak to the manner in which political communications have shifted and offer insights into what to expect in forthcoming elections and how we might respond to some of these changes.

As I indicated in that article, it is understandable that various misunderstandings were widely held. There was so much communication ... and so much of the communication that promulgated misunderstandings and blatantly incorrect information.

The volume of information and communication is a factor in its own right, and one that has grown exponentially due to the powerful amplification capabilities of technology and social media platforms, in particular. Evenmoreso, since these have become available on mobile devices. This has led to a particular technique, seen globally, exemplified by Trump, and experienced in Australia of "flooding" the infospace, such that reliable information is more difficult to find. In some cases, people become confused and can even give up - or be encouraged to give up through slogans such as "if you don't know, vote No". This leads to "drowning out" core messages. It also distracts the primary cause into refuting the claims rather than advancing understanding the proposal at hand. A Harvard article "Drowning out Democracy" points out that "drowning out" entails silencing by spending and more troubling still, eliminates debate altogether.

In Australia, we have seen the No campaign promulgate completely contradictory messages as part of the process eg. the Voice will have no power ... the Voice will have too much power. I am sure you can think of many other examples.

As I have often said, but not written here as yet, there were a thousand reasons why to vote No, and one only needed to agree with one of them to proceed to vote No. Hence, the 9.4m strong No voter cohort is much more splintered and diverse than the 6.2m strong Yes voter cohort who hold to a fairly common set of beliefs.

As an aside, that means that the 6.2m (and growing) cohort are much more staunch about the position they hold, and many are simply further emboldened by the various cries from No voters, such as:

• "stop complaining and simply accept the decision of the people"
• the mistaken claims that the No vote reflects a rejection of voice, truth and treaty.

I was recently asked to "respect the decision of the people" and asked the requestor why I should do that when many Australians and First Nations people had been disrespected by both the process and outcome of the Referendum.

Yet, the power of social media to amplify messages is not the only dynamic in play. Every time I open a new tab in Microsoft Edge, I see MSN related news on the ticker tape and am typically exposed to Sky News headlines and content. So, I am bombarded with messaging that often entails misunderstandings and sometimes conveys outright lies. Just think of the claim that the Uluru Statement from the Heart is 26 pages long. I now use a different browser!!

Another element in the mix is the manner in which conventional media operates, and the manner in which the media justifies items on the basis of "balance" - seemingly justifying the further spreading of misunderstandings and lies - prevalent in some media channels more than others.

I am sure there are more factors and that your own thoughts are raising other experiences and conclusions that you have drawn. This was simply aimed at opening or widening the door for those who may not have considered some of the dynamics now in place in the public communications space.

I want to finish, though, with some initial suggestions about how to deal with this, and hope that it prompts other suggestions as to what we can and should do to ensure sound debate and stronger community decision making processes in light of the threats identified above.

A number of actions that you might consider include:

• Find and connect to reliable communication sources - in this day and age, one mechanism is email based communication that is not subject to the vagaries of social media distribution rules
• Find and connect via this means with reliable, trustworthy, authoritative sources, and ensure that you have access to multiple sources
• Include in the mix of sources, some that offer counter views to those you hold, and test your views and your capacity to counter these views
• Ask your self how confident you are about the views you hold and more particularly, the basis for the confidence you hold
• Engage in local community-based, face-to-face interactions, as there is something different about f2f communication and important about grassroots based community opinion forming and decision making