What is the best way for journalists to counter disinformation in a world that is constantly pushing information out to audiences? In a recent talk held by the RSA, Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, and Carole Cadwalladr, investigative journalist and former features writer at The Observer, discussed what the industry can do to solve this problem and keep the press as a source of information that people trust and what to engage with.

A change to the system

Eliot started by talking about how different the media environment the industry operates in today is compared to the early 20th century, when there was an ‘elite, controlled, top down information structure’ which performed ‘verification, deliberation and accountability’. That has now changed to a ‘peer to peer/many to many network’ and that’s impacted the information that the public now receives:

‘Content is content that is viral. It’s stuff that gets attention, and that means on platforms like X and YouTube, where there’s monetisation incentives as well, people aren’t churning out content that’s truthful. They’re churning out content that gets engagement, because engagement equals money’.

Carole believes that the rise of this viral content combined with the traditional media, has led to people feeling ‘overwhelmed’ as they are being ‘bombarded with information’. She believes that this is to such an extent that we are now on the verge of ‘total information collapse’.

Adapting to a new style

How can journalists counter this? The way that information is distributed, especially via social media, means that news organisations have to be quicker than ever to cover stories and stop disinformation spreading, Eliot explained:

‘What we’re seeing increasingly is that in these social media environments, certain styles of information work better. Conspiratorial, populist, authoritarian styles of information work very well because they’re quick and they offer certainty, inclusion, and a sense of participation that you too can find the truth. The problem is the traditional institutional forms are much slower. They have procedure behind them, and in this information environment, they perform very poorly’.

Eliot and Bellingcat are trying to counter this by putting together information that can be distributed across multiple platforms, especially video content. They did this most recently with the story of the Alex Pretti shooting in Minnesota, showing multiple videos synced together – no specialised knowledge was necessary for audiences to see what had happened..

Humanising the news through trusted voices

Younger audiences are increasingly turning away from traditional media such as newspapers and broadcast television news, and getting their information from content creators instead. Carole believes that this is due to the way that legacy media are presenting the news:

‘We’re hanging on to these past structures. News bulletins look exactly the same as they always have and have the same tropes, and people don’t trust them anymore’.

Instead, Carole said that journalists need to follow the example of content creators ‘who are humanising what’s happening and filtering it through their personalities and trying to make the news make sense’. She added that teenagers and younger people are getting their news from these sources as they are addressing their information needs, seeing them as a trusted voice. Something that news organisations are now positioning themselves as – but ‘belatedly’, believes Carole. 

Transparency, accountability and getting readers involved

In an age where there is a rise in both disinformation and misinformation, it’s more important than ever that media outlets are transparent and accountable, but Carole believes that too many media institutions are ‘distant and remote’ and ‘don’t answer to criticism’. Eliot feels that is due to the way that news organisations view their audience:

‘I think the problem mainstream news organisations have is they struggle with what to do with their audience, because they still see them as customers or consumers, rather than participating in the news. When you start saying “Oh, they’re participating” that becomes very scary for a traditional news organisation’.

Carole feels that lessons can be learnt from open source investigative news outlets like Bellingcat. Eliot’s organisation has set up a discord community which now has around 40,000 members and there are lots of channels and topics for people to discuss. It actually led them to covering a story in Trinidad and Tobago about an oil spill. International media weren’t interested and local media didn’t have the resources to investigate the story properly. However, the Bellingcat discord community came together to look into it and several of the members ended up with bylines as a result. Eliot feels this is a good process to get the audience involved and show them how they are getting the stories:

‘You need those avenues to actually draw that into something publishable. Plus, it means members are seeing our work and the transparency of our process as well’.