Infodemic

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my name is Vivian Schiller and I’m theexecutive director of Aspen digital aprogram of the Aspen Institute we focuson media and technology really want tothank you for joining us all today weare welcoming a broad range of attendeesfrom from the public policy andgovernment world the corporate sectorcivic organizations educationalinstitutions media and of course AspenInstitute staff we hope that you are allsafe and keeping yourselves and yourloved ones healthy as you can see or asyou can see from me and you’ll see theothers too we’re coming to you from ourhomes through the magic of Technologyjust keep in mind that that sametechnology can glitch so reallyappreciate you bearing with us if thathappens the last few weeks have seensome of the most fast-movingdevelopments of our two lifetime withabsolutely no end in sight clear andaccurate information has never been moreimportant it is no overstatement to saythat this is a matter of life and deathand yet the misinformation is at fullplay of course the misinformation crisisit predates the pandemic this has beensomething that many of us have beendealing with for many years andmisinformation frankly has been aroundfor millennia but it is most urgent nowin this webinar our[Music]you about the contours of the so-calledinfidel at what we can do about it tomake sure that critical informationreaches its intended audience we arevery lucky to have with us dr. ClareWordle who is one of the most foremostexperts on information tracking andverification across platforms she is theco-founder of first draft anot-for-profit which is solely focusedon misinformation they conduct researchand develop fantastic resources andwhile I normally wouldn’t offer thisdisclaimer I should mention that when Isay dr. Clare Wartell she I mean the PhDkind not believe she’s going to bedispensing any medical advice at least Ihope not after Clara does herpresentation will be joined by CNNreporter Dhoni O’Sullivan Dhoni coversthe intersection of Technology andpolitics and does really some incredibleinvestigations into onlinedisinformation campaigns he’s got somegreat reporting on the infidel just inthe last few days the three of us willchat for a few minutes and then we’llturn it over to your questions if youlook at the bottom of your screen rightnow you will see a Q&A button from thereif you click on that you can then typeout your question and if you arecomfortable doing so please include yourname and affiliation it’s just reallyhelpful to hear what you know whereyou’re coming from please know we maynot get to all of your past questionsbut we’ll get through as many as we canand you again you can put those inanytime you can put questions in now youdon’t have to wait until the Q&A sectionso with that I would be joined now byClaire Wartell she’s coming on any sayVivienne I Claire it’s so good to seeyou thank me thank you for joining usfrom your home and so now I’m going toturn it over to you so you can do yourthing and I’ll I’ll see you on the otherside great thanks Vivian and I just puttogether a few slides because I’m goingto talk about some visuals and it makesit much easier if people can actuallyseewhat I’m talking about so my name isClaire waddle and I founded first draftabout four years ago as a resource tohelp journalists tackle these questionsabout how do you verify material onlineit’s now as you all know become muchmore pressing we do projects in thefield we do research and we do lots oftraining which increasingly is now onwebinars so just to give you kind ofthings I’m going to run through in thenext twenty minutes that’s all and I’lltalk about the terminology and why itmatters I’m gonna talk some of thetrends that we’re seeing I have a teamof ten and they are spending all dayright now monitoring social medialooking for misinformation I’m going toend with some actual concrete stepsabout best practices for slowing downmisinformation so the infidel it’s kindof astonishing that it was only February25th that w-h-o kind of started talkingabout the info Demick and at the timepeople called me and say is this crazyClaire and I have to admit at that pointI couldn’t quite imagine how quicklythis was going to unravel but I think wenow all realize that whilst of courselots of governments are thinking aboutfood logistics medical logistics we alsonow to critically think aboutinformation logistics and that’s whatI’m going to focus on right now so interms of terminology I think just tostart off with I wanted to talk aboutthe differences between misinformationdisinformation and mal information sodisinformation is false information andthe people creating and sharing it meanto cause harm so the Russians meddlingin the election that was disinformationbut that is very different to missinformation which is still false but thepeople sharing it don’t realize it’sfalse and they don’t mean any harm andso most of what we’re seeing right nowis actually misinformation and malinformation is a third category which isgenuine information that when peopleshare it they’re doing it to cause harmso for example if you had a passengerlist from a cruise liner and you sharedthat passenger list that is genuineinformation but the sharing of it isprobably done to cause harm althoughright now these lines are very blurredso a couple of years ago I created thistypology which was the seven typespartly because I refused to use the termfake news because it didn’t grasp thecomplexity and I would argue what we’reseeing right nowin terms of this epidemic is it’s it’sfar more complex than that term thatwe’ve been talking about for the lastthree years because at one hand thingslike satire we see bad actors labelingthings as satire deliberately to getaround platform policies and to makesure that fact checkers don’t touchtheir work but knowing that it will thenturn into misinformation becausesomebody will get confused and theydon’t realize it’s satire things likefalse context genuine imagery but maybeit’s from the SARS epidemic and itresurfaces and people think it’s fromtoday but actually it’s from five yearsago or things like impostor content whensomebody takes a logo so we’re seeingthis right now flyers in LA a couple ofweeks ago with the CDC logo the w-h-ologo and lots of false information aboutkovat that were being posted throughpeople’s letter boxes in California andthat’s because our brains areunfortunately we’ve kind of got lizardbrains and so one of the things thatwe’re constantly looking for isheuristics which are mental shortcuts tohelp us understand something and a logowhether it’s a CNN logo or it’s a w-h-ologo is one of the quickest ways thatyou can build credibility with somebodyand so no wonder we’re seeing that andwe’re actually seeing local news sitesacross the u.s. having their logos usedagain to push false informationfabricated content I’m actually a lotless worried about that the biggestbucket we’re seeing right now is kind ofmisleading content old contentresurfacing it’s not outright lies orfalsehoods or conspiracies I’m gonnatalk a little bit about that but Iwanted to talk about the landscape firstso some of these trends around covert 19there see most of the most viral contenthas more than its basically a kernel oftruth which as we know is the mosteffective form of disinformation ashumans if you’re more likely to believesomething it’s more likely to travel sowhy come up with a completely fabricatedconspiracy that people might challengewhen actually something that soundsreally true is more likely to beeffective so we all probably sawsomething over the weekend which waslike 10 tips from a Stanford doctor andthere it was like gargle with hot waterfor 10 minutes well that sounds prettytrue or it sounds like it could be trueso that’s what we’re seeing most ofright now is things that are much closerto the potentialmost of this stuff is Conte is travelingenclosed and semi closed spaces so lotsof this is enclosed Facebook groups lotsof this is on places like telegramwhatsapp text messages and that’sultimately because we’re going back toas humans the people that were closestto so right now many of us are actuallyliving alone or we’re not leaving thehouse many people are frightened and sorather than taking to Facebook wereactually taking to one another in oursmaller groups were like oh my goodnesshave you seen this I’m really nervouswhat happens if there’s a lockdowntomorrow have you got enough toilet wellthat’s what’s happening right now and soessentially it’s like exaggerated gossipas opposed to disinformation and finallythe platform’s have taken tougher actionthan I’ve ever seen I think we have torecognize that when it comes topolitical speech or even things likevaccines there’s this idea that there’stwo sides but with coronavirus you’renot having people like I want morecoronavirus misinformation so actuallythe platforms are freer to make kind ofstronger steps to take stronger stepsthe question I’d like to see is are theycapturing the data are they creatingbenchmarks so that they can actually geta sense of what these different andstronger measures did in terms of thepublic sphere so very quickly there arefour categories of online chatter thefirst one is disinformation about thecause of the virus you’ve got half asyou can imagine one side of the planetsaying it was built in a US lab you’vegot another side of the planet saying noit was built in a Chinese lab you’ve gota lot of conspiracy theories saying thatactually it was Bill Gates because hepredicted this in 2015 in his TED talkso that most of the conspiracies areabout where did this start the secondbucket is misinformation about how thevirus spreads lots of kind ofmisinformation about how long does thevirus stay on a surface you know will Iget this if I you know if I’ve got a dogbut again this is more just peopleasking questions as opposed to kind ofdisinformation thirdly and similarly Misand disinformation about symptoms andtreatments so we do see some peopletrying to peddle false cures certainpeople trying to sell supplements nosurprises that always exists but we’reseeing more of I’ve been told that ifyou actually take old malaria tabletsthat you might have kicking around inyour cupboardthat will help if you take HIVmedication that will help it’s that kindof stuff that we’re seeing which ispeople to Mike I don’t know there’s avacuum right now of information cananybody help me and so that’s most ofthe misinformation and finally themajority of the most troubling I wouldsay is confusion about government andofficial response and the reason thatI’m troubled by this is right down rightnow we have what’s that messages sayingI’m seeing the army move across theinterstate I’ve told that there’s goingto be a shutdown tomorrow and right nowthere’s no huge harm with that this isjust people ramping up my concern iswhat happens when there are rumors aboutruns on the bank that there’s no moneyleft in the ATMs that don’t go to thathospital because they’ve got no suppliesbut if you go to this hospital they dohave extra supplies I just don’t thinkwe’re quite ready for what it might looklike if we have rumors that could leadto offline behavior and that’s what I’dlove to talk a little bit more aboutit’s like how do we prepare for wherethis is potentially going to escalatebecause right now we’re not necessarilyseeing a connection with a rumor hereand then people taking action so as youcan see the Bill Gates conspiracy isalive and well he did an AMA read ityesterday I didn’t have a chance tocatch up but I was like you are a braveman bill to wade into that conversationthe misinformation piecethere’s yesterday a lot of chatter ontelegram about there being two strainsof the Kobe virus that actually theChinese strain wasn’t as serious as theone that Italy and now the u.s. isfacing even though new scientists on the5th of March that that’s not true wehave a thing in the world that I live incalled zombie rumors which isessentially doesn’t matter how manytimes you debunk it just keeps comingback from the dead and so we’re startingto see some of these zombie rumors whenit comes to covert I think maybe a lotof you saw these at the weekend which isas you can see not visual these are aheavy on text but it’s a lot of I heardthis with my friend at the CDC I heardthis for my friend who’s a nurse this iswhat you need to do so lots of peoplecirculating right now and in fact one ofthem was you have to take a deep breathhold your breath for 10 seconds if youcan’t do that you’ve got kovat 19 and Ijust saw a colleague put something inslack that said that there’s actually aUK building that’s asking people to holdtheir breath for 10 seconds before theywalk through the building so they gothere’s an examlove ARIMA moving into real life AlexJones is currently selling thesesupplements for $90 but again some ofthis is just you know we should bebuilding up our immunity take morevitamin C stop drinking sleep better youknow it’s hard to argue with some ofsome of this stuff and I’m just going toput my hands up right now and say Ishared this with two people I care abouton Sunday nightthis came into a telegram group that Imean that with people I really reallytrust and you can see at the bottomsomebody actually said put their fingersat this is from a credible source and Iread it and I thought okay I meant to bean expert in misinformation but I’mcurrently living alone my family are inanother country that I can’t get back toif anything happens to them I’m I’m notgonna say it right now I’m it’s not agood time to be made like all of us andso I saw that it was like okay the twopeople I care about the most in thiscity I need to tell them and I shared itand of course I woke up on Mondaymorning I was like oh I can’t believe Ifell for it the reason I found four it’scuz I’m human doesn’t matter how muchmedia literacy training you’ve gonethrough right now this is all aboutemotion and it’s all about fear andright now it doesn’t really matter whatwe teach people what we should beteaching people is if you have anemotional response if it makes you upsetif it makes you angryif it makes you want to go out and buysomething to control the situation thatis an emotional response and stop beforeyou reshare information and this isglobal so these are just some examplesyesterday from France and the UK we’reseeing the same messages pop up but hereit might be martial law in Ireland it’sthe army in the UK it’s you knownational quarantine in France it’s youknow the equivalent it’s the samemessage because it works irrespective ofbecause you know who wherever we arewe’re all human and so somebody seessomething working and it happens and myquestion is I don’t think that this ismalicious I actually think this ispeople saying on the phone to each otherhey guess what my brother works for thegovernment he’s just come out from themeeting like I’m telling you because Icare about you don’t tell anybody elselike this is gossip I don’t think it’smalicious I think it’s the game oftelephone come to life and if youhaven’t listened to the daily fromyesterday I would really recommend itit’s basically an interview withGovernor Cuomo and during the interviewhe says there’s not going to be shelterin place in New York and he says it veryclearly and they come out of theinterview and one of the reporters fromNew York Times says to him hey GovernorCuomo I heard you say there won’t beshelter in place but CNN is playingright now and saying there’s going to beshelter in place and Cuomo says well noactually you know we’re going to get astatement to them now but that’s notgoing to ever happen in New York and itwas this moment of right now who do wego to I mean see we’ll hear from Dhonilike CNN is doing an incredible joblots of newsrooms are doing anincredible job but this is moving soquickly how do we make sure that peopleget credible information in real timeand the problem is a lot of governmentagencies and health authorities don’thave the experience to do real-timejournalism and breaking news journalismwhich is unfortunately what we needright now I need an hourly update on myphone from the New York City like that’swhat happened in South Korea we needregular updates so that people don’thave a vacuum because it’s the vacuumthat’s causing the misinformation solastly very quickly there was some bestpractices for slowing downmisinformation bad actors people whounderstand misinformation understandthat outrage and fear works and simplevisuals work the problem is those of uswho work in the quality informationspace we tend to love text and we tendto love PDF so here and I apologize forthis image but I want to show thedifference this is the kind of meme thatyou see if you are followinganti-vaxxers this is what qualityinformation looks like in thevaccinations space an 87 page PDF oftenwith a picture of a dripping needle onthe front cover and I’m being facetiousdeliberately right now because I’mtrying to make the point which isthere’s an asymmetrical playing fieldhere and people who understand how topush viral information understand thatit has to be simple it needs to beshareable and it needs to probably bevisual and unfortunately those of us whoare researchers fact-checkerspolicymakers we tend to love text welove PDF and we’re not particularly goodat creating really engaging shareablecontent quickly and that’s what we needbecause there are four psychologicaltheories that help shape ourunderstanding of best practices thefirst one familiarity back for effect byrepeating falsehoods in order to correctthem debunks can make falsehoods morefamiliar and thus more likely to beaccepted as true so here’s an examplesomebody listing all the myths on theleft-hand side and then putting thefacts do not do this because our brainsare lizard brains and we’re more likelyto remember the myths than we are thefacts and this is proven out inexperimental research so although it’svery tempting to say 10 myths about thecoronavirus please don’t do it justbecause unfortunately our brains areoverwhelmed and are really bad at makingsense of that similarly this is from thewhu-oh as you can see the rumor is incapital letters and is darker and in abigger font than underneath which is thefact they’ve luckily updated it now inEnglish where the Spanish start is stilllike this we cannot run with rumorsbigger and more prominent than we do thefacts and wherever possible we shouldonly lead with the facts if you havemore space you can do what George Lakoffcalls which is a truth sandwich which isto start with the fact explain thatrumors are circulating that saysomething different and end with thetruth but remember if you’re justtweeting something out or you’re justputting a Facebook post and people onlysee the image and the headline youhaven’t got room for nuance or a truthsandwich so in that context try to onlylead with the truth secondly theoverkill backfire effect the easierinformation is to process the morelikely it is to be accepted less detailcan be more effective so WHR actuallypartnered with pinterest to create thesepins and it feels like we’re gettingfurther towards the place we need to bebut there’s still a hell of a lot oftext on these pins I yes it’s simpleerror but it’s not as simple as itshould be and so we’ve seen some greatdiagrams about washing hands we justneed to be much better we need to hire aton of designers right now to createreally simple graphics and illustrationsto help people understand worldviewbackfire effect people processinformation in biased ways when debunksthreatened a person’s worldview thosemost fixed in their views can doubledown so as we all know it’s quitedifficult right now to tell our 70 yearold parents to stay in the house if youare used derogatory language or you sayhey listen I saw you share this onFacebook but you’re wrong and here’s theSnopes article the person just doublesdown on what you’ve told them insteadyou be like hey I saw what you put onFacebook I’ve seen a lot of thoughsimilar messages but actually you know Ifeel like people are trying to divide usor scare us right now and that’s notreally what we need is a society youknow it’s about we it’s about us it’sabout community it’s not about sayingyour facts are wrong that doesn’t work100% I’m telling you I think you willknow this and finally this is crucialmissing alternatives labeling somethingas false but not providing explanationoften leaves people with questions if adebunker doesn’t answer these questionspeople continue to rely on badinformation so if I say something andsomebody comes up says no Claire that’swrong a hole opens up in my brainbecause you told me it’s wrong if youdon’t explain why it’s wrong or fill inthe gap with by giving me an explanationmy brain will be like well I’ve got awhole day I’ve got to fill it and I willfill it back with the false informationso the famous example for training isyou don’t say Obama isn’t a Muslim yousay Obama is a Christian and you showfootage of him going to church withMichelle you have replaced the isn’twith oh I’ve got something to fill thehole in my brain so if somebody’speddling false health supplements don’tjust say you know tumeric powder doesn’thelpit’s like turmeric powder doesn’t helpbut people are peddling this right nowto make money oh okay but what does helpand I’ll tell you what helps maybe youknow then I give an actual piece ofinformation about what helps treatmentsso this stuff really matters becauseagain our brains are really lazy andlizard-like and it’s everybody it’s leftand right it’s just human brains andwe’re more overloaded and scared thanever makes us even worse at this stuffso five best practices focus on thefacts make your content easy to processavoid ridicule oratory comments answerany questions that a debunk might ariseand finally be precise with languagewe’re seeing some real scare mongeringin headlines right now and I know thatthat leads to clicks we know that butwhether you’re a newsroom or whetheryou’re an information provider we needto do everything we can to dial down thepanic so for example Twitter momentsevery morning tells me how many peoplehave died but it also tells me how manypeople have survived and just addingthat context makes a big difference sothe language we use we need to doeverything we can to keep trustso actually around trust there’s nowreporting today saying that young peopleactually are being admitted to ICU andthere’s a lot of young people right nowon Instagram and Facebook saying hang onpeople lied to me they told me I wasgoing to be safe and now they’re tellingme I might not be so we’ve lost acritical moment here around trustbecause of that particular element andI’ll leave you with this which is onFriday there was quite a lot of rumorssaying that the subway was going to shutdown and I saw that and I’ll say okayhow are they gonna do bunk this and onSaturday morning the subway tweeted thishello everyonerumors are spreading we prefer facts wewill operate regular subway and busservice tomorrow we’re continuallymonitoring the coab in 19 sitting topublic health experts you should do thesamethis is pitch perfect it doesn’t sayfalse the subway isn’t shutting down itdoesn’t tell you that it basically youknow leads with the fact says keep upyou know keep updated with us andactually as if they shared it again andsaid if you’ve heard this from yourcousin they just I don’t know who’srunning their social media right now butthey’re doing an amazing job so that wasvery quick I’m happy to answer anyquestions but this is complex and theonly way we do this is if we worktogether to figure out how to makecommunications work in an age ofpandemics I’m gonna hand over to Vivianand I’ll stay around to answer questionsClaire that was amazing and thank youparticularly for telling us how becauseI think we are all human and the factthat you of all people one of theworld’s foremost experts could sharesomething that was false means thatthat’s possible for any of us and by theway your your comments about the powerof simple images and means and how thatin a way is to the advantage of peoplewho are spreading misinformation itreminds me though of how how the termflatten the curve which pretty much camefrom that incredibly simple graphicwhich I can’t imagine everybody that’swatching this now hasn’t seen with thespiky graphic of no intervention and nosocial distancing and then the flattenedone with the flattened curve with theline showing the number of beds howpowerfully and some say that it’s alittle bit misleading but it’s such asimple message and and really resonatedum reminder to everybody I’m gonna ask acouple of questions to Claire we’regonna bring Dhoni in but while you’rewatching again there’s a Q&A button atthe bottom of your screenclick that and type in your question andwe will get to as many of them as we canand again please add your name andaffiliation if you don’t mind it’s justinteresting for us and helpful but ifyou don’t want to that’s fine too soclear just ask one question coming outof that presentation and then we’llbring Dhoni on in a second so app youreleased a poll yesterday saying thatthe majority of Americans report seeingeither not much or no made-up news andinformation again if you add those twocategories it was greater than 50% aboutKovan 19 how do we combat the credulitywhich we we all want to get informationourselves of people who were seeing whatthey see online without and here’s partof the thing that worries me withoutscaring them so much that they distrustall information that they’re seeingincluding real information coming fromsourcesso I saw that and was really interestedI actually think it’s partly because forthe last three years we’ve talked aboutthe term fake news so people expect fakenews to come from a site that looksproblematic this stuff is coming to themfrom each other so I think the challengethere is when you say have you seen thisstuff they don’t think that it’s falseor misleading they think it’s friendstelling them that a lockdown is actuallycoming so the challenge is to say topeople be critical but be critical ofeach other and I think what we failed tosay is you know as I started thepresentation right now it seems prettyinnocuous but what these false andmisleading messages from one anothercould do in two weeks time could lead topanicviolence and something that I don’treally want us to go and think about butI think if we don’t say it as a societyonly share information you are gettingfrom the government from a HealthAuthority and maybe CNN but I meanthat’s what I’m saying to friends andfamily right now is like don’t shareanything else you’re seeing cuz I’mconversing you it’s probably gonna bemisleading well that’s a good time forme to bring in Dhoni Dhoni O’Sullivanfrom CNN thank you for being with usbeing being with us this is great youknow and Claire’s answer of course givesme a perfect opportunity to ask yousince you cover for CNN not onlymisinformation but the politicalimplications of misinformation how ismessaging from the federal governmentfrom federal agencies like the CDC HHSetc and particularly from the WhiteHouse faring in the information trustfront yeah that’s a good question I meanI guess what we’ve seen over the pastfew weeks and I guess particularly thepast week is there is good informationcoming from the CDC and officialagencies like that also local governmentI think you know if you see that the NewYork mayor’s office is very active onTwitter and putting out debunking ofmisinformation in real time last weekendfor instance as Claire alluded to therewas speculation photo your own boat ontext message and on Twitter that NewYork City was going into full lockdownquarantine and the mayor and the NYPDwas out very quickly to try and dismissthose rumors obviously from the WhiteHouse I think there has been a change intone we’ve seen over the past few daysso I guess hopefully that will continueyeah you know I want to raise somethingelse that was part of your reportingdony clear mentioned briefly when intalking about the vectors about privatemessaging and you know Twitter isvisible for all of us to see so when wesee these memes coming across on Twitterand sometimes on public pages onFacebook you know we know about itprivate messages like whatsapp are ofcourse encrypted and private and we yourreporting was about public healthofficials who are struggling to trackthe spread of the canova you knowcoronavirus misinformation and theycan’t see what’s being spread fromperson to person so talk to us a littlebit what you’re seeing and what theplatforms are doing about informationbeing spread again peer-to-peer yeahit’s been really fascinating to followthis because what we’re really seeinghere I think is templates ofmisinformation okay where we’re seeingthe same room or verbatim word for wordthat’s just slightly changed for regionor for language so this week forinstance we came across a whatsappmessage that made false claims about foryoung people in Ireland who supposedlyhad the corona virus that message wascirculating on whatsapp in English butthe exact same message only changinglocation to Toulouse and Franceand in Hebrew was circulating amongHebrew speakers so what we’re seeing isthe misinformation being repurposed allaround the world and as you say you knowI think for a long time we haven’treally we’ve never really I guess talkedin the past few years aboutmisinformation that spreads true textmessage and and more so missing frommisinformation that spreads and watsappand I think the question you asked aboutwhatsapp is very important becausewhatsapp is obviously a platform that isowned by Facebook Facebook has been verypublic about the steps it is taking andall the investments it is making andit’s making a lot more investments thanthan other platforms into fightingcoronavirus misinformation but at thesame time whatsapp the platform it ownsby design there is no way to be able toaccurately get a picture of the totalityof the misinformation which is beingshared on the platform because it isend-to-end encrypted so I think peopleget very uncomfortable when we starttalking about and you know end-to-endencryption and and you know any way thatcould undermine that because obviouslypeople want privacy they want securitybut you know a lot of these whatsappgroups are very big they’re more than200 people so it’s I think it’s I thinkas whatsapp grows and and eventuallyreaches the US market I think there’sgoing to be I think that’s where we’regoing to be seeing a lot more of theissues with misinformation and I thinkthat’s where the conversation is goingto be moving in the next few years theinteresting thing is the other part ofFacebook is having almost an oppositeissue within whereby Facebook the mainFacebook product that most of us areused towe’re accidentally marking legitimatenews false the risk of course again isno one believes anything and you’rereporting are you seeing any lesseningin trust of all content yeah that seemsto be an unfortunate bug for Facebookfor a few hours on on Tuesday eveninglook I mean I think overall we’ve seenthe platforms like Facebook and Twitterspecifically being a pretty aggressiveand going out there and saying whatthey’re going to do Twitter just lastnight announced new rules additionalrules about the coronavirus so it’ll beinteresting to see if they actuallyimplement them in an effective way andbut you know ultimately as I guess as abenchmark to see how the platforms aredoing Facebook did make a pledge as atGoogle about two weeks ago that theywould stop accepting ads for face masksbecause it’s causing panic and it’s alsotake could potentially be taking awayresources from health care workers therehas been multiple reports over the pastweek of these ads still showing up inthe platforms and I think the defensewould be look there’s millions of ads onthese platforms these are automatedsystems and we’re obviously going tomiss you know the occasional ad or twobut the ads that have been showing up onGoogle and Facebook littered some ofthem literally say coronavirus some ofthem say in plain text face masks so youknow I and I understand that this is aproblem and a challenge that ishappening you know in an unprecedentedspeed but if these companies can’t getsomething as simple as that rice youknow I don’t think it inspires a lot ofconference in their other efforts thankyou yeah so we’re gonna now go to yourquestions if you’ve seen me occasionallylooking over to the side it’s because mycolleague Betsy Cooper is curating thequestions that are coming in and Matt soforgive the little head head nodding areminder again the Q&A button is at thebottom type in your question add yourname and affiliation if you arecomfortable doing so clear a questionfor you for this one is from ananonymous commentator you talked aboutsimplicity helps get across messagesthat’s what what what people gravitateto to what extent might simplicityactually exacerbate the problem givenyour point that the truth is morecomplex and requires more text in detailyeah not saying any of this is easy andin many ways it’s about pulling peoplein and so having simple graphics thatare highly shareable is important butit’s about we need to come up with newskills essentially if not just relyingon 800 words as a way to capture all thenuance we need to almost think about howdo we make sure in the image and then inthe you know the first head the firstparagraph we are doing what we can tolead with the facts and then sayinghowever please continue reading becausewe need the zip but I think we’rereliantmuch on language and explain you knowsaying it’s complex right now if wedon’t understand human behavior which isto just scroll quickly we’re going tolose people so we’ve got to find anyways to be simple quickly and to makesure that it’s very shareable you knowone interesting thing is so far andwe’re you know half an hour into thisnobody has talked about foreign entitieswho have these coordinatedmisinformation campaigns like we like weso often see around politics and in factwarrants trouble with wall streetjournal’ just texted a question to usasking if you can see if you have seenany specific examples a foreignsponsored coronavirus disinformationcampaignswell I’ll hand over to Dhoni the biggerquestion is it’s very difficult inreal-time to do this kind of attributionbut maybe don’t has ferreted outsomething that i’ve list yeah i mean thechallenge here of course is that wenormally learn about these campaignsthree or four months or 12 months or 18months after the fact you know I thinkthere’s particularly among us in themedia a lot of us have been obviouslylooking very closely to see if there isevidence of that sort of misinformationnation state backed and the EuropeanUnion had a report out earlier this weekwhere they talked about Russia’s overtmedias like Russia today in Sputnik andabout how they were sort of you knowpushing some false narratives around thecoronavirus but in terms of the box andthe trolls the sort of covert activitythat we saw in 2016 you know right nowwe we certainly we don’t know anythingabout you know we haven’t found evidenceof that that’s not to say it’s nothappening as I say we often find aboutthatout about this after the fact I will saythough you know as Claire mentioned evenjust among you know my family andfriends and I think people who would notnormally fall for misinformation becauseit’s we’re in such a panicked andemotional state people in the US and inEuropeand around the world are perfectlycapable of making misinformationthemselves go viral about thecoronavirus good news it’s pretty easyto do Julie Smith from WebsterUniversity asks writes in I teach medialiteracy and I find my students areextremely cynical about news andinformation what advice can you suggestto me you know I mean on one hand it’samazing to see traffic go up right nowbut I do think that there because of allof the discussion about fake news in thelast three years it has worked we’veseen research with audiences suggestthat many people when you say what’sfake news they say in New York Times andCNN I do think also a lot of newsroomshaven’t necessarily found ways toconnect with younger audiences and againto think of different formats I mean theWashington Post on tick-tock is amazingbut I just I think we’ve not necessarilytaken that audience segment seriouslyand as I said in my presentation there’sa lot of anger right now from youngpeople saying we’ve been lied to aboutthis virus over the last three weeks soyou need a few of them for people to sayI’m gonna turn to one another becauseI’m not getting what I want from thenews media so and I’m sure medialiteracy experts of which I know quite afew would also say this is this is along-term play not a short-term play andthe more civic engagement and medialiteracynews literacy in the classroom over timewill help will help kids and then adultsand then older adults understand thedifference next question is from andforgive me I’m sorry if I mispronouncedyour name but Wilson Harmon is a fellowat Nieman Foundation for journalism atHarvard what is your assessment of whatis your current assessment of journalismin the face of the pandemic and youropinion are journalists passing thetests now I will add my own caveat whichis journalists is an awfully broad termbut but I would love to hear what youhave to say donee of course yourexceptional journalism accepted yeah Idon’t think I should be grading myselfhere I mean what I think has been veryhelpfulyou know that we’ve put on here andpodcasts like the daily has done is alot of just answering readers andviewers questions and you know that’ssomething that CNN has been doingthey’re doing another town hall tonightwith Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Guptaand where a lot of that is based on justgetting people through social media andelsewhere to submit questions and theirconcerns about the virus and answeringthem directly so I think that sort ofpublic service reporting husband I’mhelpful but I think I’d be interested tohear why what both of you think clearand well I’ll say I do not want to seeanother image of an Asian person in aface maskI don’t want to see another gurneyoutsider you know building I don’t wantto see another hazmat suit so I thinkwe’ve got a problem in that the imageryis stock and I don’t think isparticularly I’ll also say very quicklyI think there’s a lot of duplication soI actually think there’s a lot of datavoids there’s a lot of questions inreal-time don’t you’re absolutely rightalmost every three hours we’ve seen thenew data voids emerging with people withquestions and so how we plug themquickly where the data void is sorry sothe data void is work that came out ofdata and society with Dana Boyd who saidactually sometimes if you search forsomething and there’s no qualityinformation around it so for example doapricot kernels cure cancer well CNNthat’s probably not done a story thatsays don’t be stupid apricot kernelshaven’t cured cancer so all you see whenyou search for it is people trying tosell you apricot kernels so the idea ofa data void is when there’s an absenceof quality information which is when Isaid earlier about don’t repeat therumor in the headline that’s actuallyfor Twitter and Facebook if you’reputting content on YouTube and forsearch you should repeat the rumor inthe headline so that when somebodysearches for that rumor they findquality information so I would love tosee to donors point much morecollaboration with newsroom saying lotsof people want answers about this howcan we make sure that we’re not allanswering the same questions so that wecan do more together but I think it’s Ithink in the next two or three weeks Ithink the news industry will look quitedifferent in the next three weeks and Ithink there’ll be a forced collaborationto say you know we’ve got to cometogether around our own resources whichyou’re goingbecome tighter and how does it find wedo have uh several more questions aboutjournalism I’ll just take those now andthen we’ll move to different topicsSimon France managing editor BBC GlobalNews what are the added challengesjournalists and news outlets need toaddress when there is continuously andsuddenly new uncertain seas to know andworry about at both the local and globalleveldony why don’t you take that as a as aas our resident reporter I mean it’sit’s to stick to the facts you knowthere is of course there’s gonna be newquestions every five minutes and I thinkthat you know we’re all doing our bestto try and get answers God you knowmetric that there is gonna be a lot of alot of unknowns I think you know a bigchallenge that I think a lot of newsorganizations have is when there ismisinformation in these data voids andparticularly as they’re developing youknow now almost by two minutes is we cansee this misinformation going viralpretty quickly and you know we can we’regetting it from family and friends andwe’re seeing it on Twitter and Facebookand elsewhereI think newsrooms still mainstream newsrooms including my own I don’t thinkwe’ve figured out a way to know whenshould we actually go out there with adebunk and a fact check and when shouldwe not because there is a concern thatby going out there and doing a factcheck on CNN for instance that you’reactually bringing you know you’reraising where you’re you’re bringingattention to misinformation that maybe alot of people hadn’t seen and that theyotherwise wouldn’t see had you notdebunked it so I think that’s somethingthat we’re gonna have to figure out inthe weeks and months ahead so that ofcourse makes sense when you’re seeingrandom information come from anonymouspeople on social platforms but HilaryRoss with the assembly program atBerkman Klein asks a very relevantquestion which is what do you do whenthat mince information is being sharedby the government or the webI added the white house sorry well Imean we’ve we’ve seen our reportersI guess particularly under you know thisadministration for three years nowpushing for the truth and we’ve seen Iguess you know real-time fact-checkingor almost real-time fact-checking aftera lot of these press briefings where youknow reporters from out that’s allacross the country are very quicklyfollowing up which sources in governmentto make sure that’s what being what isbeing said at the podium is accurate Imean you can take the example just lastweek of when when Trump referenced thisfamous infamous website from Google forpeople to find information aboutcoronavirus and testing locations I meanalmost instantly and it was tech outletsthat were first to break it was thatwhat Trump had said about the Googlecollaboration wasn’t totally accurate soum you know it just goes back to the thebasics of reporting and then having tobe extremely quick after America I guessthis would be a good time to shout outto your colleague Daniel Dale who doeshe and others do extraordinary jobsdoing live if you don’t follow him andothers like him on Twitter doextraordinary job fact-checkingthe statements of public officials liveit’s really a sight to behold we’regonna change topics here for a minuteYale Eisenstaedt from Cornell Tech Kyleshe’s right so I’m curious to hear ifyou were seeing an increase incollaboration between the majorplatforms we know that Twitter FacebookGoogle have not been great about sharingprotocols learning processes definitionsare you seeing a up in truecollaboration and if so is there anopportunity to expand this for futureefforts so I don’t know if Tony said wedid we did see a statement that saidthere is collaboration but there was agreat piece by Kate clonic a couple ofweeks ago basically talking about it’sgreat they saybut where’s the transparency about whatthat collaboration looks like whatinformation are they sharing how arethey using it what are they doing I meanone thing I’d say is right now we’re inthe middle of an amazing naturalexperiment for the platform’s so if theyare taking stronger steps now aroundcoronavirus they really should bebenchmarking the metrics and seeingwhether or not these stronger positionsare making a difference in terms ofsearch queries algorithmic reachalthough all those other things that wenever get access to right now they couldtest some of these stronger measures andat the end of it say has it made adifference I would love if what’s thatright now stopped forwarding so if Iwant to forward something I need to takea screenshot and reshare it so I cantake me if you do it but there’s afriction built into the system likeNathan mattias from Cornell has donethis research if what’s up did thatright now we would have six months ofdata to say what did that do in terms oflevels of misinformation I’m forwardingabout six months ago but you took itfrom 20 to like you can now share itforward to five take out sharing andlet’s let’s measure itokay I would love to see more of themjust collaboration cross-platform butwith academics right now this is like amoment where we have to say all previouswars are off the table let’s do newstuff I think that that forwarding stepthat whatsapp took last years they willobviously say it’s meaningful but I meanyou can still forward to five groups atthe one time so you can still forward tohundreds of people a thousand people atonce so it’s really a misnomer but whatI would say is I think the you know theplatform’s every time they go to CapitolHill they tell Congress that they areyou know kumbaya and everybody isgetting along and sharing informationbut every time we see you know takedownsof Russian accounts or Chinese accountsor Iranian comes from differentplatforms will ultimately end up findingthe very often corresponding accounts onso a Facebook does a takedown on aTuesday on a Wednesday or even sometimes10 or 12 months later correspondingaccounts that’s part of that samecampaign will still be on Twitter or onGoogleyeah and I think I think some sharinghas has increased for sure because thereis more coordinated takedowns now but Idid certainly not happening at the levelI think that would be conducive toactually having a real meaningful impactWow we have so many great questions Iwish we could get to all of them Clairewell actually both of youDanielle Thompson from Columbia askshave you been able to source the originpoints of some of the coronavirusmisinformation I mean this stuff is hardthe provenance of how far this thisstuff spreads there was a silly video ofthe day that looked like an Italianpatient had escaped to hospital we wereable to go back for three weeks it wason 9gag it was all over the Internet Imean so how we track this stuff isreally difficult I’d go back to thatpoint about attribution everybody wantsto say immediately who’s behind this andI we don’t know I mean I think some ofthose viral what’s that message I thinkit’s because somebody calls him there’slike hey Bob like my brother was just inthis meeting like I’m just only tellingyou don’t tell anybody else and I justthink I don’t think it’s malicious Icould be wrong I could you know in sixmonths time so I was an idiot but Idon’t think right now it’s maliciousmost of it Peter again I’m gonna manglelast name apologies our heart ramped askwith China removing the New York TimesWall Street Journal and Washington Postreporters and and others how much can wetrust information coming out of Chinanow you want to take that 30 yeah umyeah I mean that’s today today was thefirst day I think we saw the number ofcases in Italy exceed the number ofreported cases in China but yeah I meanI think that’s a very good question Ithink it’s something that’s been of aconcern to all of us since this startedback in December and and yet itcertainly isn’t it doesn’t inspire Iguess a lot of conference and seeing umthat move but you knowthere are outlets obviously which somereporters still on the ground there andI I guess we’ll just have here but Imean yet and China’s is hardly the mosthas currently has a record of being themost reliable source of information yeahthree weeks ago it was quite clear thatChina was starting to push this rumourthat the virus started in the US and oneof our team members who’s from mainlandChina now lives here was saying watch itit’s coming you know we sort of mappedover the last three weeks how it hasthat Reimer has grown and grown whilstat the same time the US isn’t pushingthe rumor that it’s died in you know aswe know it’s called the Wuhan flu soyeah there’s there’s some diplomaticclashing going on right now thisquestion is from dan Porterfield the CEOof the Aspen Institute hi boss he sayshe asked the following one thing I’venoticed is that the content of messagesthe tone of messages and the volume ofmessages all coming in avalanches cancreate feelings of urgency and anxietyin us as recipients often they come atus through digital platforms which alsohave some also have a sort of personalemails coming from colleagues familiesand friends as consumers of streaminginformation are there any practices wecan use to prepare ourselves toeffectively process so much coming at usI mean Claire you’re you’re you’re atthe epicenter well you’re both at theepicenter of this so much informationthat you’re trying to parse comingcoming at you yeah I mean I think youknow I’ve set up dashboards to look forthe good stuff dashboards to look at thebad stuff dashboards to look at theupdates coming but also I mean we’re allworking under incredible circumstances Ihaven’t spoken to a human being for thelast nine days other than a shop keepertwice so the level of stress that weroll under is unbelievable so I keeptelling myself to put the phone downto stop looking but I also can’t stoplooking so I can’t really give advicebecause I but I worry about what doesthis look like as we keep going becausewe have to you know think about selfcare information you know but I don’tknow how we do itthe only house your coping mechanismyeah I think Claire and I are probablyterrible people to come to herand it’s it’s really difficult I mean Ithink even more so now that we’re allworking from home because you know Ithink when you’re in the office you’remore likely at least I am to get up frommy desk and have a walk around you knowI think you know the only option can beto turn off the phone for an hour or twoand pick up a book or watch something onNetflix that is not about a you knowyeah so I mean I think it’s difficultand particularly in in this over thepast week now that we’re all just reallyglued to our devices all day I thinkit’s just about putting them downbecause I think the second once you pickthem up you know you’re gonna get itfrom from all angles right from socialmedia from the news from your from yourfriends on whatsapp and text message Iwill just save my own coping mechanismwhen we all find our own is that Ichanneled my the stress around all thisinto into and this may be from you knowbeing in the news business for so longto what can I do how can I contributehow can I have an impact so thank youfor allowing me to exercise that impulsewith all of you today but yeah we allhave to find our own our own comfortzone another friend of mine was talkingabout how they watch they’re watchinglike comedies and doing jigsaw puzzlesto try to calm down I’m the opposite atnight we’re watching like homeland andnarcos and stuff so you know I don’tknow what that says about me we havesome more great questions coming in weonly have a few more minutes so I sorrywe’re not going to get to all of yourquestions so this is from Alex Joel withthe Washington Collis of College of Lawat American University given thenon-traditional intermediaries are soinfluential on social media expert C’sfocusing on establishing directrelationship with those intermediariescouldn’t direct engagement andconversation make a difference in theinformation that is circulatedare we seeing that trend you broke up alittle bit Vivian but I think you weretalking about kind of intermediaries inthe community yeah so about about healthexperts in agencies having directrelationships with those who putinformation out into the world yeah Imean I I would love to say as I saidlike government agencies and HealthAuthority is working much more closelywith journalists maybe all those amazingjournalists that got laid off maybe wecould actually hire them to go and workfor these different places but I thinkso that point about community like inthe 1980’s the UK had like a keepBritain Tidy campaign and it was allabout you know don’t throw litter I’mreally serious right now like how do wereach into communities and work withfaith leaders and you know barber shopowners and a whole host of communityleaders who can reach people who aren’ttraditionally consuming the news orother forms of information or youngerpeople who are the influencers for allthese different communities and I thinkmy work if this goes on for as long as Ithink it’s going to what’s the form ofkind of like the communication tree thatmeans that we’re not just relying onmajor news rooms and we’re not you knowI’d like to get an hourly pushnotification please from different youknow we just I think we need to thinkvery differently about this and findingdifferent communities that aren’tnecessary traditional news consumers isvital and some of the vectors that youknow there are non-traditional newsorganizations but platforms that peopleengage with around their communitieslike next door and patch and in factthis is a plug to say we’re working onsome efforts to bring them together withlocal news organizations and localauthorities to sort of come togetheraround what kind of information is fedto local communities so watch that spacesorry plug for our own program just twomore questions is well we have time for[Music]Dan Barnett from a Butte CommunityCollege in Northern California hopeyou’re staying safe dan how should weaddress the prevalence of goodinformation but that is hours or daysold and no longer accurate that’s a goodonemm that’s anrecord that yeah that is a good questionI think the only news organization thatI’ve seen do this in a really effectiveway I think is the Guardian where theyhave labels that they’ve built now intheir systems that they they put a veryprominent label label on if a story isI’m not not sure quite how old but ifit’s you know more than a few months oldthey’ll put a label on it to say here’sthe date of this story because sometimeswhat we’ve seen in the pastlong before the coronavirus is storiesgoing viral and you know even actuallyduring the I think the Iowa Democraticprimary before all the chaos there was atweet from that said Joe Biden hasdropped out of the race and the tweethad actually been from when Joe Bidenwas running for president more than adecade go and had dropped out of therace but people see that fresh in theirfeeds and and they think it is new newsI haven’t seen you know I know at CNN wehave running a live bug so that’s wherewe’re directing a lot of our audience togo to and but Claire might have ideas ofother ways of how people are addressingthis I would just say it’s always been aproblem and now it’s absolutely criticalwe should have won and visual standardat the top of every single piece ofcontent that has a date stamp thatshould also you know in what’s that oreverywhere it couldn’t be the mostcritical thing is the most criticalthing it’s on this one site well we areunfortunately out of time we have somany other great questions we’ll we’llfind a way to get those questionsanswered but I want to thank you Claireand Dhoni we look forward to followingyour reporting on CNN and Claire all thegreat information you provide on Twitterand other platforms this webinar will beavailable for viewing and we’ll besharing a link shortlyplease check a Twitter handle axe aspendigital for that link we will push itout there it should be a little bitlater todayI also just want to mention we’re gonnahave more webinars coming up soon fromAspen digitalwe’re going to be looking at technologyand the impact on human connectionswe’re going to do a deep dive on theplatforms that trying to use during theepidemic and some other webinars oncybersecurity also on a flag that weannounced today a challenge grant fortechnologists working on Kovan 19related needs and solutions again checkaxe Aspen digital for those links sothank you so much and I reallyappreciate everybody’s attention andstay healthy stay safe and don’t shareuntrustworthy information thank youeverybodyyou

As COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe, so does misinformation — thwarting efforts to control the disease and risking lives. In this webinar, Dr. Claire Wardle, a leading expert on content verification, outlines the global trends around information flows and the coronavirus. What misinformation is spreading? How is accurate information being shared? How are newsrooms, health authorities, platforms and businesses responding? During this unprecedented emergency, are we prepared for the impact of rumors and falsehoods that could have serious consequences?

Claire is joined by CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan who covers the intersection of technology and politics, and investigates online disinformation campaigns.

Aspen Digital Executive Director Vivian Schiller moderates.

This webinar was recorded on Thursday, March 19, 2020.