Why Clive Palmer’s lockdown ads can be rejected by newspapers on ethical grounds

Posted on August 18, 2021 by particularkev

Denis Muller, The University of MelbourneClive Palmer’s United Australia Party advertisements inferentially objecting to COVID-19 lockdowns demonstrate one more way in which the freedoms essential to a democracy can be abused to the detriment of the public interest.

Democracies protect freedom of speech, especially political speech, because without it democracy cannot work. When speech is harmful, however, laws and ethical conventions exist to curb it.

The laws regulating political advertising are minimal.

Section 329 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act is confined to the issue of whether a publication is likely to mislead or deceive an elector in relation to the casting of a vote. It has nothing to say about truth in political advertising for the good reason that defining truth in that context would be highly subjective and therefore oppressive.

Sections 52 and 53 of the Trade Practices Act make it an offence for corporations to engage in misleading or deceptive conduct, or to make false or misleading representations. The act has nothing to say about political advertising.

Ad Standards, the industry self-regulator, has a code of ethics that enjoins advertisers not to engage in misleading or deceptive conduct. It is a general rule that applies to all advertising, political or not.

The Palmer ads do not violate any of these provisions.

So where does that leave media organisations that receive an approach from the likes of Palmer to publish advertisements the terms of which are not false, misleading or deceptive, but which are clearly designed to undermine public support for public health measures such as lockdowns?

It leaves them having to decide whether to exercise an ethical prerogative.

Short of a legal requirement to do so – say, in settlement of a law suit – no media organisation is obliged to publish an advertisement. It is in almost all cases an ethical decision.

Naturally, freedom of speech imposes a heavy ethical burden to publish, but it is not the only consideration. John Stuart Mill’s harm principle becomes relevant. That principle says the prevention of harm to others is a legitimate constraint on individual freedom.

Undermining public support for public health measures is obviously harmful and against the public interest. Media organisations are entitled to make decisions on ethical bases like this. An example from relatively ancient history will illustrate the point.

In the late 1970s, 4 Corners ran a program alleging that the Utah Development Corporation’s mining activities in Queensland were causing environmental damage. A few days after the program was broadcast, The Sydney Morning Herald received a full-page advertisement from Utah not only repudiating what 4 Corners had said but attacking the professional integrity of the journalists who made the program.

I was chief of staff of the Herald that day and the advertisement was referred to me, partly because it contained the seeds of what might have been a news story and partly because there were concerns it might be defamatory.

I referred it to the executive assistant to the editor, David Bowman, who refused to publish it.

He objected to it not only on legal grounds but on ethical grounds, because it impugned the integrity of the journalists in circumstances where they would have no opportunity to respond. In his view, this was unfair.

A short while later, the advertising people came back saying Utah had offered to indemnify the Herald against any legal damages or costs arising from publication of the advertisement.

Bowman held to his ethical objection and was supported by the general manager, R. P. Falkingham, who said: “You don’t publish something just because a man with a lot of money stands behind you.”

The advertisement did not run, not because of the legal risks but because it would have breached the ethical value of fairness.

Palmer’s ads – which say lockdowns are bad for mental health, bad for jobs and bad for the economy – contain truisms. There is nothing false or misleading about them. But they clearly seek to exploit public resentment about lockdowns for political gain.

The clear intention is to stir up opposition and make the public health orders harder to enforce.

We live in an age where there are not only high levels of public anxiety, but also a great deal of confusion about who to believe on matters such as climate change and the pandemic. It is against the public interest to add gratuitously to that confusion, and harmful to the public welfare to undermine health orders.

These are grounds for rejecting his advertisements.

Nine Entertainment, which publishes The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review, has rejected Palmer ads that contain misinformation about the pandemic, including about vaccines. Clearly such ads violate the rules against misleading and deceptive content.

But the ads opposing lockdowns on economic or health grounds were initially accepted by Nine, and are still running in News Corporation.

The question now is whether media organisations are willing to make decisions based on ethical considerations that are wider than the narrow standard of deception.

Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Liberals’ Dan Andrews questions are a perfect case study in how to manufacture fake news

Posted on June 24, 2021 by particularkev

Premier Dan Andrews shortly after the fall that left him with broken ribs and a damaged spine.
AAP/@DanielAndrewsMP

Denis Muller, The University of MelbourneA case study in the manufacture of fake news is playing out right now in Melbourne.

Victoria’s shadow treasurer, Louise Staley, is putting about suggestive questions hinting darkly at a cover-up of how Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews injured his back three months ago.

She has not produced a shred of evidence to support this suggestion, yet the exercise has gained substantial traction in the media. All the main news outlets have had to pay attention to it.

It is the kind of political chicanery that confronts responsible media with a dilemma: how to hold a public official to account without oxygenating the conspiracy theory in which she is trading.

In this case, the fake-news manufacturing process has worked like this.

A public official puts on the public record some questions that look innocuous but will be associated in some minds with a scurrilous conspiracy theory circulating on social media.

Because it is a public official putting this on the public record, it is then picked up by a journalist.

The journalist in turn asks a question about it at a press conference. In this case, the question was put to Acting Premier James Merlino on June 8.

It necessarily generates a response from Merlino and that adds a further ingredient of apparent legitimacy to the mix.

Ambulance Victoria feels it necessary to issue a statement reiterating the exact circumstances in which an ambulance was called to take Andrews to hospital.

Then the Chief Commissioner of Police, Shane Patton, feels obliged to put out a statement confirming police did not attend the scene.

All this adds to the false impression there is some real news here.

But it doesn’t make the originating material true.

The originating material remains fake, but now the conspiracy theory has accumulated many of the attributes of a real story.

However, responsible media recognise what the real story is.

The real story is the attempt by a senior state Liberal MP to manufacture fake news – so they tell this story without oxygenating the content of the fake news itself.

Shadow Treasurer Louise Staley has been leading the opposition’s questions about Andrews’ fall.
James Ross/AAP

Australia’s professional mass media – television, radio, newspapers – have followed this course.

They have reported Staley’s raising of the conspiracy theory and her formulation of a series of questions to the government, while at the same time quoting condemnation of her antics by Merlino and others in the state government.

Even Sky News, notorious for its anti-Labor politics, has been circumspect. It has contented itself with references to a “torrent” of “amazing rumours” before retreating to safer and more familiar ground by describing Andrews as a Soviet-style paramount leader.

It reflects well on the Australian media – perhaps reinforced in their caution by the oppressiveness of Australia’s defamation laws – that they have handled this nasty outbreak of fakery with decency, accuracy and fairness.

The result is that, in this case, the manufacturing process has been cut off at the point of distribution.

For the record, Andrews slipped on wet stairs at a holiday house in Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula on March 9, sustaining several broken ribs and a fractured vertebra. He is expected to return to work some time this month.

Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How do we counter COVID misinformation? Challenge it directly with the facts

Posted on January 29, 2021 by particularkev

Adam Dunn, University of Sydney

The government is rolling out a new public information campaign this week to reassure the public about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, which one expert has said “couldn’t be more crucial” to people actually getting the jabs when they are available.

Access to vaccines is the most important barrier to widespread immunisations, so this campaign should go a long way toward getting the right people vaccinated at the right time.

But it also comes as government ministers — and even the prime minister — have refused to address the COVID-19 misinformation coming from those within their own ranks.

Despite advice from the Therapeutic Goods Administration explaining that hydroxychloroquine is not an effective treatment for COVID-19, MP Craig Kelly has continued to promote the opposite on Facebook. A letter he wrote on the same topic, bearing the Commonwealth coat of arms was also widely distributed.

He has also incorrectly advocated the use of the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19, and encouraged people to protest against what he called “health bureaucrats in an ivory tower”.

Compared to health experts, politicians and celebrities tend to have access to larger and more diverse audiences, particularly on social media. But politicians and celebrities may not always have the appraisal skills they need to assess clinical evidence.

I spend much of my time examining how researchers introduce biases into the design and reporting of trials and systematic reviews. Kelly probably has less experience in critically appraising trial design and reporting. But if he and I were competing for attention among Australians, his opinions would certainly reach a much larger and varied segment of the population.

Does misinformation really cause harm?

According to a recent Quantum Market Research survey of 1,000 people commissioned by the Department of Health, four in five respondents said they were likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine when it’s made available.

Australia generally has high levels of vaccine confidence compared to other wealthy countries – 72% strongly agree that vaccines are safe and less than 2% strongly disagree.

But there does appear to be some hesitancy about the COVID-19 vaccine. In the Quantum survey, 27% of respondents overall, and 42% of women in their 30s, had concerns about vaccine safety. According to the report, this showed

a need to dispel some specific fears held by certain cohorts of the community in relation to potential adverse side effects.

For other types of COVID misinformation, a University of Sydney study found that younger men had stronger agreement with misconceptions and myths, such as the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment, that 5G networks spread the virus or that the virus was engineered in a lab.

Surveys showing how attitudes and beliefs vary by demographics are useful, but it is difficult to know how exposure to misinformation affects the decisions people make about their health in the real world.

Studies measuring what happens to people’s behaviours after misinformation reaches a mainstream audience are rare. One study from 2015 looked at the effect of an ABC Catalyst episode that misrepresented evidence about cholesterol-lowering drugs — it found fewer people filled their statin prescriptions after the show.

When it comes to COVID-19, researchers are only starting to understand the influence of misinformation on people’s behaviours.

After public discussion about using bleach to potentially treat COVID-19, for instance, the number of internet searches about injecting and drinking disinfectants increased. This was followed by a spike in the number of calls to poison control phone lines for disinfectant-related injuries.

As vaccine roll-outs accelerate around the world, concern is growing about vaccine hesitancy among certain groups.
Peter Dejong/AP

Does countering misinformation online work?

The aim of countering misinformation is not to change the opinions of the people posting it, but to reduce misperceptions among the often silent audience. Public health organisations promoting the benefits of vaccinations on social media consider this when they decide to engage with anti-vaccine posts.

A study published this month by two American researchers, Emily Vraga and Leticia Bode, tested the effect of posting an infographic correction in response to misinformation about the science of a false COVID-19 prevention method. They found a bot developed with the World Health Organization and Facebook was able to reduce misperceptions by posting factual responses to misinformation when it appeared.

A common concern about correcting misinformation in this way is that it might cause a backfire effect, leading people to become more entrenched in misinformed beliefs. But research shows the backfire effect appears to be much rarer than first thought.

Vraga and Bode found no evidence of a backfire effect in their study. Their results suggest that responding to COVID-19 misinformation with factual information is likely to do more good than harm.

So, what’s the best strategy?

Social media platforms can address COVID-19 misinformation by simply removing or labelling posts and deplatforming users who post it.

This is probably most effective in situations where the user posting the misinformation has a small audience. In these cases, responding to misinformation with facts in a more direct way may be a waste of time and could unintentionally amplify the post.

When misinformation is shared by people like Kelly who are in positions of power and influence, removing those posts is like cutting a head off a hydra. It doesn’t stop the spread of misinformation at the source and more of the same will likely fill the void left behind.

In these instances, governments and organisations should consider directly countering misinformation where it occurs. To do this effectively, they need to consider the size of the audience, respond to the misinformation and not the person, and present evidence in simple and engaging ways.

The government’s current campaign fills an important gap in providing simple and clear information about who should get vaccinated and how. It doesn’t directly address the misinformation problem, but I think this would be the wrong place for that kind of effort, anyway.

Instead, research suggests it might be better to directly challenge misinformation where it appears. Rather than demanding the deplatforming of the people who post misinformation, we might instead think of it as an opportunity to correct misperceptions in front of the audiences that really need it.

Adam Dunn, Associate professor, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

3 fallacies that blighted this year’s COVID commentary — have you fallen foul of any of them?

Posted on December 31, 2020 by particularkev

Rachael L. Brown, Australian National University

Throughout the pandemic we have seen a deluge of outright lies, conspiracy theories and pseudoscience from various peddlers of self-interest.

But to a philosopher like me, more vexing than these calculated cases of disinformation has been the amount of sloppy reasoning in public discourse about Australia’s COVID epidemic.

Barely a day goes by without a politician, official or commentator making the kind of basic failure of critical thinking that I teach first-year philosophy undergraduates to avoid.

While these are sometimes deliberate attempts to obfuscate, it is more frequently the well-intentioned who fall victim to these often appealing fallacies. The only antidote is a large dose of scepticism, mixed with some understanding of where our reasoning frequently goes wrong.

Here are three critical thinking errors that were rife in 2020.

Fallacy 1: false comparisons

In arguing against lockdowns, it was not uncommon to hear people decry the “hidden cost” of public health measures designed to curb the virus’s spread. Commonly cited examples include drops in cancer detection or the negative impacts of school closures, particularly on students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

It is certainly reasonable to ask whether the costs of lockdown outweigh the benefits. But any such reckoning needs to factor in the costs of not imposing a lockdown.

It is a mistake to use the “pre-COVID normal” as the baseline for comparison. We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto. Pre-COVID cancer rates or school grades are irrelevant when thinking about the impact of public health measures in our current circumstances.

What is relevant is the expected outcomes given the impact of the COVID infections that would occur without public health measures in place. In the case of cancer detection, for example, we should expect a drop in diagnoses relative to pre-COVID levels both with, and without, lockdowns in place. During a pandemic, the fear of infection creates a significant extra factor that would make people less likely to visit their doctor for a cancer check.

Similarly, when looking at the impact of school closures, particularly on socioeconomically vulnerable students, we need to factor in the likely impact of increased COVID infections. As has been shown both at home and abroad, the impacts of COVID outbreaks are disproportionately felt by disadvantaged communities.

Fallacy 2: failing to see the nuance behind the numbers

Victorians were understandably glued to the daily case numbers during their epic lockdown, while their New South Wales neighbours nervously kept an eye on their own tally. But the focus on numbers can mislead; bald case numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Why, for example, did two such similar states have such contrasting fortunes? Behind the headline numbers were some key differences that can explain why Victoria endured a major second wave, while NSW escaped relatively unscathed. Not all of them involve differences in contact-tracing capacity.

To illustrate, despite similar absolute case numbers over the ten days to October 14, about 60% of the cases in NSW were returned international travellers, compared with none in Victoria. Given that a positive case in hotel quarantine is easier to contain than one at large among the public, Victoria clearly faced a more challenging situation than NSW.

Similarly, there are other features of the demographics of the Victorian outbreak that also set it apart from NSW, such as the average size of the households in which infected individuals live and the source of their infections. The devil is in the detail.

Fallacy 3: thinking everything happens for a reason

The ancient Greeks blamed unexpected bad outcomes in their lives on Tykhe, the goddess of chance, and the Romans similarly blamed Fortuna. In our largely secular modern world, however, we typically assume a bad outcome to be a sign of failure rather than simple bad luck.

But in a pandemic, not only can relatively small differences in situations lead to large differences in outcomes, but these small differences often come down to dumb luck. This is especially true when talking about very small numbers of cases, as we have in Australia now.

At such low numbers, bad luck and chance are likely to play a big role in our fortunes. South Australia, for instance, may have been plunged into lockdown as a result of dodgy ventilation in a hotel corridor.

It is easy to interpret any jump in case numbers as indicating a failure of the public health measures in place. But this overlooks the role of other factors: whether a COVID-positive person lives with one other person or six, or whether they work in aged care, or from home, where they shop, whether or not they developed symptoms while infected, and whether or not they self-isolated as a result. All of this can make a significant difference to the potential number of others whom they infect with the virus.

It is also harder to trace the contacts of someone working outside the home, compared with someone working from home and only leaving to go to the shops once a week. No two infections are truly equal.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned by a sudden spike in cases, and it doesn’t mean we can’t ask questions about what went wrong. But it also doesn’t mean it necessarily warrants any shift from our current public health measures.

It’s an uncomfortable thought, but luck is a huge part of where we find ourselves today, and where we could be in the future.

Rachael L. Brown, Director of the Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences and Senior Lecturer at the School of Philosophy, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

To stay or cut away? As Trump makes baseless claims, TV networks are faced with a serious dilemma

Posted on November 7, 2020 by particularkev

Denis Muller, University of Melbourne

In the United States, democratic norms are breaking down.

The president, Donald Trump, baselessly claimed at a White House press conference on Friday morning, Australian time, that the presidential election has been stolen from him by fraudulent and corrupt electoral processes.

This confronted the television networks, whose job is to report the news, with an acute dilemma.

In an already volatile political atmosphere, do they go on reporting these lies, laced with an undertone of veiled incitement to violence? Or do they cut away on the grounds that by continuing to broadcast this stuff, they are helping to propagate lies and perhaps to oxygenate a threat to the civil peace?

Major networks tune out

Many of the major networks — MSNBC, NBC News, CNBC, CBS News and ABC News — decided to cut away. So did National Public Radio.

MSNBC presenter Brian Williams said of Trump’s speech:

It was not rooted in reality and at this point, where our country is, it’s dangerous.

CNBC presenter, Shepard Smith, said the network was not going to allow it to keep going because what Trump was saying was not true.

CNN and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News broadcast Trump’s entire press conference but immediately afterwards challenged what he said. CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale said it had been the most “dishonest” speech Trump had ever given, with anchor Jake Tapper saying Trump’s statements were “pathetic” and “a feast of falsehoods”.

Fox’s host Martha MacCallum said the supposed evidence and proof of election misconduct would need to be produced.

Even Murdoch’s New York Post, which had endorsed Trump’s re-election, accused him of making “baseless” election fraud claims, quoting a Republican Congressman as saying they were “insane”.

The Washington Post carried two news stories on its front page, clearly calling out Trump’s lies: “Falsehood upon falsehood”; “A speech of historic dishonesty”.

A serious decision to silence the President

But what of the networks’ decision to cut away?

Silencing a public official in the course of his official duties is a very serious abrogation of the media’s duty in a democracy.

But so is allowing the airwaves to be used in such a way as to arouse fears for public confidence in the democratic process and — as MSNBC’s Williams argued — even public safety.

Donald Trump giving his White House press conference. — Caption text.
Shawn Thew/ EPA

On the run, many of the big networks prioritised public confidence in the democratic process, and public safety, over the reporting of the president’s words.

It is a rare circumstance in any democratic society that the media are placed in the position of having to shoulder such a heavy burden of responsibility.

It is most unlikely that once the present crisis is over, assuming Democrat candidate Joe Biden wins, the American media will find themselves in this position again.

Even so, a Rubicon has been crossed. A president of the United States, a publicly elected official, has been silenced by significant elements of the professional mass media in the course of his public duties.

This was done principally on the grounds he was lying to the people in circumstances where there was a foreseeable risk of serious harm to the body politic, and there was no practicable way to reduce the risk.

Is that a standard the media is prepared to set for the future? If so, it would be giving itself a power that goes well beyond anything the media has claimed for itself up till now.

Journalists need to keep their nerve

In considering this, two questions arise.

What if all media outlets had adopted this course? No one except those at the White House press conference would have known the whole of what Trump said, seen the context and observed the demeanour with which he said it.

Would it have been enough to do as CNN and Fox did — report the speech and then repudiate it?

An answer to that would be: the lies were coming so thick and fast, and were so damaging to the public interest, that it would have been impossible to set the record straight in anything like real time.

Real-time fact-checking is a relatively new development, and a welcome one. But its feasibility should not be a criterion for deciding whether to publish breaking news, unless there is doubt about whether the breaking news is actually happening.

The networks that cut away doubtless acted in good faith to do right by the country. Trump’s speech was shocking and irresponsible.

Trump supporters protest in Detroit. — Trump supporters have taken to the streets since the polls closed on November 3.
Nicole Hester/AP

However, American democracy is in crisis. At this time, above all, the public needs the institution of the fourth estate to keep its nerve and a clear head.

A primary norm of journalism is to inform the public. That certainly means being fair and accurate. But if the news contains lies, the norm is to publish and then call out the lying and set the record straight as soon as possible.

The networks need to explain to their audiences their reasoning behind the decision to cut away, and the media as a whole need to realise that if the norms of journalism break down, that just adds to the tragic chaos into which their country has descended.

Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why QAnon is attracting so many followers in Australia — and how it can be countered

Posted on August 30, 2020 by particularkev

Kaz Ross, University of Tasmania

On September 5, a coalition of online groups are planning an Australia-wide action called the “Day of Freedom”. The organisers claim hundreds of thousands will join them on the streets in defiance of restrictions on group gatherings and mask-wearing mandates.

Some online supporters believe Stage 5 lockdown will be introduced in Melbourne the following week and the “Day of Freedom” is the last chance for Australians to stand up to an increasingly tyrannical government.

The action is the latest in a series of protests in Australia against the government’s COVID-19 restrictions. The main issues brought up during these protests centre around 5G, government surveillance, freedom of movement and, of course, vaccinations.

And one general conspiracy theory now unites these disparate groups — QAnon.

Why QAnon has exploded in popularity globally

Since its inception in the US in late 2017, QAnon has morphed beyond a specific, unfounded claim about President Donald Trump working with special counsel Robert Mueller to expose a paedophile ring supposedly run by Bill and Hillary Clinton and the “deep state”. Now, it is an all-encompassing world of conspiracies.

QAnon conspiracy theories now include such wild claims as Microsoft founder Bill Gates using coronavirus as a cover to implant microchips in people, to governments erecting 5G towers during lockdown to surveil the population.

Donald Trump has tacitly endorsed QAnon, saying its followers
Leah Millis/Reuters

Last week, Facebook deleted over 790 groups, 100 pages and 1,500 ads tied to QAnon and restricted the accounts of hundreds of other Facebook groups and thousands of Instagram accounts. QAnon-related newsfeed rankings and search results were also downgraded.

Facebook is aiming to reduce the organising ability of the QAnon community, but so far such crackdowns seem to have had little effect on the spread of misinformation.

In July, Twitter removed 7,000 accounts, but the QAnon conspiracy has become even more widespread since then. A series of global “save the children” protests in the last few weeks is proof of how resilient and adaptable the community is.

Why Australians are turning to QAnon in large numbers

QAnon encourages people to look for evidence of conspiracies in the media and in government actions. Looking back over the last several years, we can see a range of events or conspiracy theories that have helped QAnon appeal to increasing numbers of followers in Australia.

1) Conspiracies about global governance

In 2015, Senator Malcolm Roberts claimed the UN’s 1992 “Agenda 21” plan for sustainable development as a foreign global plan aimed at depriving nations of their sovereignty and citizens of their property rights.

The belief that “Agenda 21” is a blueprint for corrupt global governance has become a core tenet of QAnon in Australia.

Any talk of “global bankers and cabals” directly taps into longstanding anti-Semitic conspiracies about supposed Jewish world domination often centred on the figure of billionaire George Soros. The pandemic and QAnon have also proven to be fertile ground for neo-Nazis in Australia.

2) Impact of the far-right social media

QAnon has its roots on the far-right bulletin boards of the websites 4Chan and 8Chan. Other campaigns from the same sources, such as the “It’s OK to be White” motion led by One Nation leader Pauline Hanson in the Senate, have been remarkably successful in Australia, showing our susceptibility to viral trolling efforts.

3) Perceived paedophiles in power

During the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse, Senator Bill Heffernan tried unsuccessfully to submit the names of 28 prominent Australians which he alleged were paedophiles.

His failure is widely shared in QAnon circles as proof of a cover-up of child abuse at all levels of Australian government. The belief the country is run by a corrupt paedophile cabal is the most fundamental plank of the QAnon platform.

Among the QAnon conspiracy theories in the US is that Hollywood actors have engaged in crimes against children.
CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA/EPA

4) Increasingly ‘unaccountable and incompetent’ governments

A number of recent events have eroded public trust in government — from the “sports rorts affair” to the Witness K case — and all serve to further fuel the QAnon suspicion of authority figures.

5) Longstanding alternative health lobbies

Australia’s sizeable anti-vax movement has found great support in the QAnon community. Fear about mandatory vaccinations is widespread, as is a distrust of “big pharma”.

Also, the continuing roll-out of 5G technology throughout the pandemic has confirmed the belief among QAnon followers that there are ulterior motives for the lockdown. Wellness influencers such as celebrity chef Pete Evans have amplified these messages to their millions of followers.

6) The ‘plandemic’ and weaponising of COVID-19

In the QAnon world, debates about the origin of the coronavirus, death rates, definition of cases, testing protocols and possible treatments are underpinned by a belief that governments are covering up the truth. Many believe the virus isn’t real or deadly, or it was deliberately introduced to hasten government control of populations.

Understanding QAnon followers

Understanding why people become part of these movements is the key to stopping the spread of the QAnon virus. Research into extremist groups shows four elements are important:

1) Real or perceived personal and collective grievances

This year, some of these grievances have been linked directly to the pandemic: government lockdown restrictions, a loss of income, fear about the future and disruption of plans such as travel.

2) Networks and personal ties

Social media has given people the ability to find others with similar grievances or beliefs, to share doubts and concerns and to learn about connecting theories and explanations for what may be troubling them.

3) Political and religious ideologies

QAnon is very hierarchically structured, similar to evangelical Christianity. QAnon followers join a select group of truth seekers who are following the “light” and have a duty to wake up the “sheeple”. Like some religions, the QAnon world is welcoming to all and provides a strong sense of community united by a noble purpose and hope for a better future.

4) Enabling environments and support structures

In the QAnon world, spending many hours on social media is valued as doing “research” and seen as an antidote to the so-called fake news of the mainstream media.

Social isolation, a barrage of changing and confusing pandemic news and obliging social media platforms have been a boon for QAnon groups. However, simply banning or deleting groups runs the danger of confirming the beliefs of QAnon followers.

So what can be done?

Governments need to be more sensitive in their messaging and avoid triggering panic around sensitive issues such as mandatory or forced vaccinations. Transparency about government actions, policies and mistakes all help to build trust.

Governments also need to ensure they are providing enough resources to support people during this challenging time, particularly when it comes to mental and emotional well-being. Resourcing community-building to counter isolation is vital.

For families and friends, losing a loved one “down the Q rabbit hole” is distressing. Research shows that arguing over facts and myths doesn’t work.

Like many conspiracy theories, there are elements of truth in QAnon. Empathy and compassion, rather than ridicule and ostracism, are the keys to remaining connected to the Q follower in your life. Hopefully, with time, they’ll come back.

Kaz Ross, Lecturer in Humanities (Asian Studies), University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Coronavirus misinformation is a global issue, but which myth you fall for likely depends on where you live

Posted on August 14, 2020 by particularkev

Jason Weismueller, University of Western Australia; Jacob Shapiro, Princeton University; Jan Oledan, Princeton University, and Paul Harrigan, University of Western Australia

In February, major social media platforms attended a meeting hosted by the World Health Organisation to address coronavirus misinformation. The aim was to catalyse the fight against what the United Nations has called an “infodemic”.

Usually, misinformation is focused on specific regions and topics. But COVID-19 is different. For what seems like the first time, both misinformation and fact-checking behaviours are coordinated around a common set of narratives the world over.

In our research, we identified the key trends in both coronavirus misinformation and fact-checking efforts. Using Google’s Fact Check Explorer computing interface we tracked fact-check posts from January to July – with the first checks appearing as early as January 22.

Google’s Fact Check Explorer database is connected with a range of fact-checkers, most of which are part of the Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network.
Screenshot

A uniform rate of growth

Our research found the volume of fact-checks on coronavirus misinformation increased steadily in the early stages of the virus’s spread (January and February) and then increased sharply in March and April – when the virus started to spread globally.

Interestingly, we found the same pattern of gradual and then sudden increase even after dividing fact-checks into Spanish, Hindi, Indonesian and Portuguese.

Thus, misinformation and subsequent fact-checking efforts trended in a similar way right across the globe. This is a unique feature of COVID-19.

According to our analysis, there has been no equivalent global trend for other issues such as elections, terrorism, police activity or immigration.

Different nations, different misconceptions

On March 16, the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, in collaboration with Microsoft Research, began cataloguing COVID-19 misinformation.

It did this by collating news articles with reporting by a wide range of local fact-checking networks and global groups such as Agence France-Presse and NewsGuard.

We analysed this data set to explore the evolution of specific COVID-19 narratives, with “narrative” referring to the type of story a piece of misinformation pushes.

For instance, one misinformation narrative concerns the “origin of the virus”. This includes the false claim the virus jumped to humans as a result of someone eating bat soup.

We found the most common narrative worldwide was related to “emergency responses”. These stories reported false information about government or political responses to fighting the virus’s outbreak.

This may be because, unlike narratives surrounding the “nature of the virus”, it is easy to speculate on (and hard to prove) whether people in power have good or ill intent.

Notably, this was also the most common narrative in the US, with an early example being a false rumour the New York Police Department would immediately lock down New York City.

What’s more, a major motivation for spreading misinformation on social media is politics. The US is a polarised political environment, so this might help explain the trend towards political misinformation.

We also found China has more misinformation narratives than any other country. This may be because China is the world’s most populous country.

However, it’s worth noting the main fact-checking website used by the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project for misinformation coming out of China is run by the Chinese Communist Party.

This chart shows the proportion of total misinformation narratives on COVID-19 by the top ten countries between January and July, 2020.

When fighting misinformation, it is important to have as wide a range of independent and transparent fact-checkers as possible. This reduces the potential for bias.

Hydroxychloroquine and other (non) ‘cures’

Another set of misinformation narratives was focused on “false cures” or “false preventative measures”. This was among the most common themes in both China and Australia.

One example was a video that went viral on social media suggesting hydroxychloroquine is an effective coronavirus treatment. This is despite experts stating it is not a proven COVID-19 treatment, and can actually have harmful side effects.

Myths about the “nature of the virus” were also common. These referred to specific characteristics of the virus – such as that it can’t spread on surfaces. We know this isn’t true.

Narratives reflect world events

Our analysis found different narratives peaked at different stages of the virus’s spread.

Misinformation about the nature of the virus was prevalent during the outbreak’s early stages, probably spurred by an initial lack of scientific research regarding the nature of the virus.

In contrast, theories relating to emergency responses surfaced later and remain even now, as governments continue to implement measures to fight COVID-19’s spread.

A wide variety of fact-checkers

We also identified greater diversity in websites fact-checking COVID-19 misinformation, compared to those investigating other topics.

Since January, only 25% of 6,000 fact-check posts or articles were published by the top five fact-checking websites (ranked by number of posts). In comparison, 68% of 3,000 climate change fact-checks were published by the top five websites.

It seems resources previously devoted to a wide range of topics are now homing in on coronavirus misinformation. Nonetheless, it’s impossible to know the total volume of this content online.

For now, the best defence is for governments and online platforms to increase awareness about false claims and build on the robust fact-checking infrastructures at our disposal.

Jason Weismueller, Doctoral Researcher, University of Western Australia; Jacob Shapiro, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University; Jan Oledan, Research Specialist, Princeton University, and Paul Harrigan, Associate Professor of Marketing, University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Young men are more likely to believe COVID-19 myths. So how do we actually reach them?

Posted on August 11, 2020 by particularkev

Carissa Bonner, University of Sydney; Brooke Nickel, University of Sydney, and Kristen Pickles, University of Sydney

If the media is anything to go by, you’d think people who believe coronavirus myths are white, middle-aged women called Karen.

But our new study shows a different picture. We found men and people aged 18-25 are more likely to believe COVID-19 myths. We also found an increase among people from a non-English speaking background.

While we’ve heard recently about the importance of public health messages reaching people whose first language isn’t English, we’ve heard less about reaching young men.

What did we find?

Sydney Health Literacy Lab has been running a national COVID-19 survey of more than 1,000 social media users each month since Australia’s first lockdown.

A few weeks in, our initial survey showed younger people and men were more likely to think the benefit of herd immunity was covered up, and the threat of COVID-19 was exaggerated.

People who agreed with such statements were less likely to want to receive a future COVID-19 vaccine.

In June, after restrictions eased, we asked social media users about more specific myths. We found:

men and younger people were more likely to believe prevention myths, such as hot temperatures or UV light being able to kill the virus that causes COVID-19
people with lower education and more social disadvantage were more likely to believe causation myths, such as 5G being used to spread the virus
younger people were more likely to believe cure myths, such as vitamin C and hydroxychloroquine being effective treatments.

We need more targeted research with young Australians, and men in particular, about why some of them believe these myths and what might change their mind.

Although our research has yet to be formally peer-reviewed, it reflects what other researchers have found, both in Australia and internationally.

An Australian poll in May found similar patterns, in which men and younger people believed a range of myths more than other groups.

In the UK, younger people are more likely to hold conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19. American men are also more likely to agree with COVID-19 conspiracy theories than women.

Why is it important to reach this demographic?

We need to reach young people with health messaging for several reasons. In Australia, young people:

are less likely to have symptoms, so they are less likely to meet testing criteria such as having a sore throat, fever or cough
when they do present for testing, are more likely to test positive
are likely to have more social contacts through seeing friends more often or having service jobs. So the potential for spreading COVID-19 is greater, putting extra pressure on contact tracing
can potentially be hospitalised with COVID-19, some with severe complications despite their age.

The Victorian and New South Wales premiers have appealed to young people to limit socialising.

But is this enough when young people are losing interest in COVID-19 news? How many 20-year-old men follow Daniel Andrews on Twitter, or watch Gladys Berejiklian on television?

How can we reach young people?

We need to involve young people in the design of COVID-19 messages to get the delivery right, if we are to convince them to socialise less and follow prevention advice. We need to include them rather than blame them.

We can do this by testing our communications on young people or running consumer focus groups before releasing them to the public. We can include young people on public health communications teams.

We can also borrow strategies from marketing. For example, we know how tobacco companies use social media to effectively target young people. Paying popular influencers on platforms such as TikTok to promote reliable information is one option.

We can target specific communities to reach young men who might not access mainstream media, for instance, gamers who have many followers on YouTube.

We also know humour can be more effective than serious messages to counteract science myths.

Some great examples

There are social media campaigns happening right now to address COVID-19, which might reach more young men than traditional public health methods.

NSW Health has recently started a campaign #Itest4NSW encouraging young people to upload videos to social media in support of COVID-19 testing.

The United Nations is running the global Verified campaign involving an army of volunteers to help spread more reliable information on social media. This may be a way to reach private groups on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, where misinformation spreads under the radar.

Telstra is using Australian comedian Mark Humphries to address 5G myths in a satirical way (although this would probably have more credibility if it didn’t come from a vested interest).

Telstra is using comedian Mark Humphries to dispel 5G coronavirus myths.

Finally, tech companies like Facebook are partnering with health organisations to flag misleading content and prioritise more reliable information. But this is just a start to address the huge problem of misinformation in health.

But we need more

We can’t expect young men to access reliable COVID-19 messages from people they don’t know, through media they don’t use. To reach them, we need to build new partnerships with the influencers they trust and the social media companies that control their information.

It’s time to change our approach to public health communication, to counteract misinformation and ensure all communities can access, understand and act on reliable COVID-19 prevention advice.

Carissa Bonner, Research Fellow, University of Sydney; Brooke Nickel, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of Sydney, and Kristen Pickles, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How misinformation about 5G is spreading within our government institutions – and who’s responsible

Posted on July 13, 2020 by particularkev

Michael Jensen, University of Canberra

“Fake news” is not just a problem of misleading or false claims on fringe websites, it is increasingly filtering into the mainstream and has the potential to be deeply destructive.

My recent analysis of more than 500 public submissions to a parliamentary committee on the launch of 5G in Australia shows just how pervasive misinformation campaigns have become at the highest levels of government. A significant number of the submissions peddled inaccurate claims about the health effects of 5G.

These falsehoods were prominent enough the committee felt compelled to address the issue in its final report. The report noted:

community confidence in 5G has been shaken by extensive misinformation
preying on the fears of the public spread via the internet, and presented as facts, particularly through social media.

This is a remarkable situation for Australian public policy – it is not common for a parliamentary inquiry to have to rebut the dodgy scientific claims it receives in the form of public submissions.

While many Australians might dismiss these claims as fringe conspiracy theories, the reach of this misinformation matters. If enough people act on the basis of these claims, it can cause harm to the wider public.

In late May, for example, protests against 5G, vaccines and COVID-19 restrictions were held in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Some protesters claimed 5G was causing COVID-19 and the pandemic was a hoax – a “plandemic” – perpetuated to enslave and subjugate the people to the state.

Misinformation can also lead to violence. Last year, the FBI for the first time identified conspiracy theory-driven extremists as a terrorism threat.

Conspiracy theories that 5G causes autism, cancer and COVID-19 have also led to widespread arson attacks in the UK and Canada, along with verbal and physical attacks on employees of telecommunication companies.

The source of conspiracy messaging

To better understand the nature and origins of the misinformation campaigns against 5G in Australia, I examined the 530 submissions posted online to the parliament’s standing committee on communications and the arts.

The majority of submissions were from private citizens. A sizeable number, however, made claims about the health effects of 5G, parroting language from well-known conspiracy theory websites.

A perceived lack of “consent” (for example, here, here and here) about the planned 5G roll-out featured prominently in these submissions. One person argued she did not agree to allow 5G to be “delivered directly into” the home and “radiate” her family.

To connect sentiments like this to conspiracy groups, I looked at two well-known conspiracy sites that have been identified as promoting narratives consistent with Russian misinformation operations – the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and Zero Hedge.

CRG is an organisation founded and directed by Michel Chossudovsky, a former professor at the University of Ottawa and opinion writer for Russia Today.

CRG has been flagged by NATO intelligence as part of wider efforts to undermine trust in “government and public institutions” in North America and Europe.

Zero Hedge, which is registered in Bulgaria, attracts millions of readers every month and ranks among the top 500 sites visited in the US. Most stories are geared toward an American audience.

Researchers at Rand have connected Zero Hedge with online influencers and other media sites known for advancing pro-Kremlin narratives, such as the claim that Ukraine, and not Russia, is to blame for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

Protesters targeting the coronavirus lockdown and 5G in Melbourne in May.
Scott Barbour/AAP

How it was used in parliamentary submissions

For my research, I scoured the top posts circulated by these groups on Facebook for false claims about the health threats posed by 5G. Some stories I found had headlines like “13 Reasons 5G Wireless Technology will be a Catastrophe for Humanity” and “Hundreds of Respected Scientists Sound Alarm about Health Effects as 5G Networks go Global”.

I then tracked the diffusion of these stories on Facebook and identified 10 public groups where they were posted. Two of the groups specifically targeted Australians – Australians for Safe Technology, a group with 48,000 members, and Australia Uncensored. Many others, such as the popular right-wing conspiracy group QAnon, also contained posts about the 5G debate in Australia.

To determine the similarities in phrasing between the articles posted on these Facebook groups and submissions to the Australian parliamentary committee, I used the same technique to detect similarities in texts that is commonly used to detect plagiarism in student papers.

The analysis rates similarities in documents on a scale of 0 (entirely dissimilar) to 1 (exactly alike). There were 38 submissions with at least a 0.5 similarity to posts in the Facebook group 5G Network, Microwave Radiation Dangers and other Health Problems and 35 with a 0.5 similarity to the Australians for Safe Technology group.

This is significant because it means that for these 73 submissions, 50% of the language was, word for word, exactly the same as the posts from extreme conspiracy groups on Facebook.

The first 5G Optus tower in the suburb of Dickson in Canberra.
Mick Tsikas/AAP

The impact of misinformation on policy-making

The process for soliciting submissions to a parliamentary inquiry is an important part of our democracy. In theory, it provides ordinary citizens and organisations with a voice in forming policy.

My findings suggest Facebook conspiracy groups and potentially other conspiracy sites are attempting to co-opt this process to directly influence the way Australians think about 5G.

In the pre-internet age, misinformation campaigns often had limited reach and took a significant amount of time to spread. They typically required the production of falsified documents and a sympathetic media outlet. Mainstream news would usually ignore such stories and few people would ever read them.

Today, however, one only needs to create a false social media account and a meme. Misinformation can spread quickly if it is amplified through online trolls and bots.

It can also spread quickly on Facebook, with its algorithm designed to drive ordinary users to extremist groups and pages by exploiting their attraction to divisive content.

And once this manipulative content has been widely disseminated, countering it is like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube.

Misinformation has the potential to undermine faith in governments and institutions and make it more challenging for authorities to make demonstrable improvements in public life. This is why governments need to be more proactive in effectively communicating technical and scientific information, like details about 5G, to the public.

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, a public sphere without trusted voices quickly becomes filled with misinformation.

Michael Jensen, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Can I trust this map? 4 questions to ask when you see a map of the coronavirus pandemic

Posted on June 30, 2020 by particularkev

Amy Griffin, RMIT University

Maps have shown us how the events of this disastrous year have played out around the globe, from the Australian bushfires to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. But there are good reasons to question the maps we see.

Some of these reasons have been explored recently through maps of the bushfires or those created from satellite images.

Maps often inform our actions, but how do we know which ones are trustworthy? My research shows that answering this question may be critically important for the world’s most urgent challenge: the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why are trustworthy maps important?

Maps guide decisions, including those made by governments, private companies, and individual citizens. During the pandemic, government restrictions on activities to protect public health have been strongly informed by maps.

Governments rely on public cooperation with the restrictions, and they have used maps to explain the situation and build trust. If people don’t trust information from the government, they may be less likely to comply with the restrictions.

This highlights the importance of trustworthy COVID-19 maps. Maps can be untrustworthy when they don’t show the most relevant or timely information or because they show information in a misleading way.

Below are a few question you should ask yourself to work out whether you should trust a map you read.

What information is being mapped?

The number of cases of COVID-19 is an important piece of information. But that number could just reflect how many people are being tested. If you don’t know how much testing is being done, you can misjudge the level of risk.

Low case numbers might mean that there isn’t much testing being done. If the percentage of positive cases (positive test rate) is high, we might be missing cases. So not accounting for the number of tests can be misleading.

The World Health Organization suggests that at least ten negative tests to one positive test, a positive test rate of at most 10%, is the lowest rate of testing that is adequate.

In Australia, we have been at the forefront of making sure we are doing enough testing and we are confident that we are identifying most of the cases. Undertesting has been a problem in some other countries.

How is the information being mapped?

It’s not just the numbers that matter. How the numbers are shown is also important so that map readers get an accurate picture of what we know.

The Victorian Government recently advised Melburnians to avoid travel to and from several local council areas because of high case numbers. But their publicly available map does not show this clearly.

Compare the government-produced map with a map of the same data mapped differently. Most people interpret light as few cases and dark as more cases. The government-produced map uses dark colours for both low and high numbers of cases.

Active COVID-19 Cases in Victoria, 22 June 2020, ©State of Victoria 2020.
Victorian Government Department of Health and Human Services

Who made this map and why did they make it?

Maps can inform, misinform, and disinform, like any other information source. So it is important to pay attention to the map’s context as well as the author.

Viral maps are maps that spread quickly and widely, often via social media. Viral maps cannot always be trusted, even when they come from a reputable source. Maps that are trustworthy in one context may not be in another.

An example from Australian news media in February shows this. Several media outlets showed a map that was tweeted by UK researchers. The tweet announced the publication of their new paper about COVID-19.

The media reported the map showed locations to which COVID-19 had spread from Wuhan, China, the origin of the outbreak. It actually depicted airline flight routes, and was used in the tweet to illustrate how globally linked the world is. The map was from a 2012 study not the 2020 study.

Original tweeted map that went viral and was picked up by many news outlets, © WorldPopProject.
WorldPopProject, archived on the Wayback Machine

Many readers may have trusted that reporting because their justifiable anxiety about COVID-19 was reinforced by the map’s design choices. The mass of overlapping red symbols creates a powerful and alarming impression.

While the lines in the map indicate potential routes for virus spread, it doesn’t provide evidence that the did virus spread along all of these routes. The researchers didn’t claim that it did. But without understanding why the map was made and what it showed, several media outlets reported it inaccurately.

Maps on social media are especially likely to be missing important context and explanation. The airline route map was re-shared many times as in the tweet below, often without any source information, making it hard to check its trustworthiness.

Limiting the damage done by COVID-19 is a very substantial challenge. Maps can help ordinary citizens to work together with governments to achieve that outcome. But they need to be made and read with care. Ask yourself what is being mapped, how it’s being mapped, who made the map and why they made it.

Amy Griffin, Senior Lecturer, Geospatial Sciences, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sharing my thoughts with the world from a Particular Baptist perspective

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Does misinformation really cause harm?

Does countering misinformation online work?

So, what’s the best strategy?

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Fallacy 1: false comparisons

Fallacy 2: failing to see the nuance behind the numbers

Fallacy 3: thinking everything happens for a reason

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Major networks tune out

A serious decision to silence the President

Journalists need to keep their nerve

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Why QAnon has exploded in popularity globally

Why Australians are turning to QAnon in large numbers

Understanding QAnon followers

So what can be done?

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A uniform rate of growth

Different nations, different misconceptions

Hydroxychloroquine and other (non) ‘cures’

Narratives reflect world events

A wide variety of fact-checkers

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What did we find?

Why is it important to reach this demographic?

How can we reach young people?

Some great examples

But we need more

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The source of conspiracy messaging

How it was used in parliamentary submissions

The impact of misinformation on policy-making

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Why are trustworthy maps important?

What information is being mapped?

How is the information being mapped?

Who made this map and why did they make it?

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