Good food for thought by Kate Starboard who explores misconceptions around disinformation online and “coordinated inauthentic behavior” with a focus on polictics. This is highly relevant to clinical research, disease prevention, and healthcare as well. Some of the key takeaways:

  • Those behind disinformation campaigns purposely entangle orchestrated action with organic activity.
  • Disinformation campaigns promoting multiple, often conflicting, views.
  • Disinformation is not simply false information, it often layers true information with false.
  • Disinformation stems mainly from agents producing false content (paid ‘trolls’) and automated accounts (‘bots’) that promote it. Members of the audience become willing but unwitting collaborators who are unaware of their role, but who amplify and embellish messages.
  • The message of a campaign is the same as its goals.
  • Disinformation targets only the unsavvy or uneducated, that it works only on ‘others’. Disinformation often specifically uses the rhetoric and techniques of critical thinking to foster nihilistic scepticism.
  • Kate concludes that “as researchers and policymakers, we have to go beyond trying to measure the impact of individual disinformation campaigns using simple models of inputs (for example, messages posted by bots or trolls) and outputs (such as likes, retweets or even votes). We need models that can encompass how disinformation changes hearts, minds, networks and actions.”

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Published by Katja Reuter

Katja Reuter, PhD, has worked as a scientist, scientific program director, science writer and editor in Germany, New Zealand, and the U.S. Presently, I work as a Senior Communications and Organizational Development Consultant at the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR). I help EULAR to evaluate and improve its organization-wide communications strategy and to build a Virtual Research Centre that facilitates collaborative research across Europe. Previously, I was Assistant Professor of Clinical Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC) and Director of Digital Innovation and Communication at the Southern California Clinical & Translational Science Institute. At USC, I also founded and directed the Digital Scholar Program to help researchers better utilize digital practices and tools to achieve their research and career goals. As a researcher, I am interested in solution-oriented research to develop and evaluate digital communications approaches to promote health and foster patient engagement in research and study participant recruitment.

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