Surviving Misinformation

Masquerading News

How do we tackle stories that are being disguised as news?

If you feel like misinformation has become more rampant in Canada since the COVID-19 pandemic, you could be right. 

According to Statistics Canada,within the first three months of the pandemic, 96 per cent of Canadians who searched the term “COVID-19” on Google, felt that the content was misleading, false or inaccurate. 

It’s especially worrying when much of that misinformation (and disinformation) is circulated via social media, where 94% of Canadians say they have a presence, according to a study by Evidence by Democracy, a non-partisan Canadian non-profit organization that advocates for evidence-based policy-making in the government. 

As a result, Ottawa has invested in digital literacy, aimed at reducing misinformation. These literacy initiatives also include funding for initiatives by other organizations, such as non-profits and community centres, according to Evidence by Democracy. Since January 2020, Heritage Canada has spent $7.2 million and funded over 50 projects to address online misinformation and disinformation.

In July last year, the Canadian Heritage Minister, Pablo Rodriguez, announced $24 million in funding through the Digital Citizenship Initiative project, a multi-component strategy that aims to support democracy and social inclusion by building citizen resilience against online disinformation and building partnerships to support a healthy information ecosystem.

In the book The Verification Handbook: For Disinformation and Media Manipulation​, Claire Warlde, the co-founder and co-director of the Information Futures Lab, and Professor of the Practice at the Brown School of Public Health, writes: “Unfortunately, over the past few years, anything that might fall into the categories described here has been labeled “fake news,” a simple term that has taken off globally, often with no need for translation.” 

“I say unfortunate because it is woefully inadequate to describe the complexity we’re seeing,” she adds. “Most content that is deceptive in some way does not even masquerade as news. It is memes, videos, images or coordinated activity on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook or Instagram. And most of it isn’t fake; it’s misleading or, more frequently, genuine, but used out of context”. 

The Canadian public should get into the habit of fact-checking their sources - because in the end, we are all responsible for what we consume.