One of my wonderful Churchill Fellowship interviewees put me onto this (first linked) article from the Harvard Kennedy School, which led me to the second linked article by Kate Starbird from the University of Washington’s Centre for an Informed Public. Both pieces really piqued my interest as I prepare for my worldwide travel to investigate the impact of AI on misinformation and disinformation in elections.
I have already had the benefit of many hours of video conversations with interviewees, from Delhi to Dublin to DC. I’ve heard perspectives on the power of regulatory measures, cross-sector misinformation combat teams (thanks, India) and the need to continue public messaging long after Election Day. I’ve heard about debunking and prebunking, deepfakes and cheapfakes.
Nobody, including me, stopped to ask what exactly we all mean by misinformation. And nobody, including me, really spoke about what humans do all the time to make sense of things: we tell stories.
As a corporate practitioner, I have always been aware of the power of story-telling to underpin organisational culture, identity and values. As an Irishwoman, my personal history is bedded in millenia of Irish myths and legends, from ancient fairy forts to my own grandparents’ participation in the 1916 Easter Rising.
So these two articles really made me think about whether fact-checking is really going to help a species like humans, who “make sense of the world via stories, not via single facts”, as the first linked article states. Kate Starbird, in the second linked article, defines collective sensemaking as “a social process of meaning-making that takes shape through interactions around evidence, interpretations [and] frames”.
So, we may not be living in a post-truth world as such, but I am turning my mind to the possibility that misinformation as a concept is dead, at least in terms of being seen as a circle to be squared or a wrong to be righted.
I will spend the time I have left before my travel reflecting on this and what it means for my research. I’d love to hear what you have to say too – reach out to me via one of my social media channels or make a comment below.
Máiréad Doyle 