The other virus - Part 2

The first step in counteracting the virus of disinformation is knowing of its existence, unravelling its “genetic code,” and understanding how it spreads in different forms and mutations.

Media literacy plays a great role in this effort to counteract the damage done by disinformation. But media literacy is still in its early stages. We are very much still in the early stages of the digital information revolution where most people are ignorant of its complexities and very susceptible to manipulation.

A 36-page policy report published by the Singapore-based Nanyang Technology University in January 2018 discussed how people are cognitively predisposed to imbibing fake news. It described how the velocity of information has increased drastically with messages now spreading internationally within seconds online. “Readers are overwhelmed by the flood of information, but older markers of veracity have not kept up. These developments have given an opportunity to those seeking to destabilize a state or to push their perspectives to the fore,” it stated.

If you browse through the YouTube and Facebook videos that are trending or most viewed, you could end up believing that China’s land, air and sea arsenal in the South China Sea is the best in the region, that the US Pacific fleet is on decline, that Bongbong Marcos and the Marcoses are God’s gift to the Philippines, and that COVID-19 is a product of some grand conspiracy to control humankind.

These are some examples of the misinformation and disinformation that are bombarded daily to netizens through Facebook and YouTube algorithms that amplify disinformation and hateful content in order to maximize engagement.

For over two years I had been researching about the role that misinformation and disinformation play in our socio-political environment. I’ve been reading lots of books, research papers, academic journals and articles on the subject. But I must tell you that my conclusions remain preliminary at best.

Though deep in my intuition I know that I have the subject within grasp, I cannot make a persuasive argument complete with concrete evidence that can pass scrutiny in a peer-reviewed academic journal. I can only ask you, my readers, to be critical of whatever information and data that are presented online, especially by groups or individuals whose background you don’t know.

Consider, for example, what Moise Naim, editor of the online magazine Foreign Policy, called the YouTube Effect. He described it as a phenomenon where individual actors can rapidly disseminate to any part of the globe truthful as well as false or misleading information.

The YouTube Effect has opened doors for the voices of “citizen journalists” to be heard. More raw images are made available, untouched by the news values and ethical norms of the professional gatekeepers of mainstream media. These often have political or social ramifications. Sinister forces have, since right before the 2016 elections in the Philippines and in the United States, been up to now exploiting this YouTube effect.

Information technology has allowed just about anyone willing to learn its efficient and relatively cheap tools, to captivate viewers with eye-catching visuals. The compelling nature of video images, combined with textual information that is narrated over or flashed on the screen, plays right into our human nature as visual beings. And if visuals allow us to better understand a message and what’s behind the message, it can also be used to lull us into a false sense of credence to what is, in fact, a piece of misinformation or propaganda.

Studies have shown it is easier for us to remember content with visuals. We can be unhinged from reality before we even realize it. This need not be done to the entire population. Many of us are still not that gullible. But the enemy needs just a certain number to tip the balance in their favor during an election period, for example. An army of cyber warriors can make a candidate rank in the surveys so enough people will hop on the bandwagon and move the candidate within striking distance for the win.

One of the still few scholarly works written about this disconcerting phenomenon is “Architects of Networked Disinformation: Behind the Scenes of Troll Accounts and Fake News Production in the Philippines,” published in 2018 by Jonathan Corpus Ong of the University of Massachusetts and Amherst Jason Vincent A. Cabañes of De La Salle University.

I urge you to read it and other similar works available online. Again, the first step in neutralizing the virus of disinformation is knowing the extent of its nature and impact.