The biggest problem is that Facebook and Google are these giant feedback loops that give people what they want to hear. And when you use them in a world where your biases are being constantly confirmed, you become susceptible to fake news, propaganda, demagoguery.
– Franklin Foer, writer and journalist
This week I was invited to speak at a forum organised by students from the Institute of Teacher Education (IPG) at Batu Lintang.
I was there as one of the three panels during the hour-long discussion revolving around the topic of the role of the media in the people’s narrative and perception.
Being invited to speak at forums or public discussions is not new to me as I have been speaking at programmes organised by higher learning institutions, mainly to share my experience in the industry.
This was no different. The questions that were fielded were mainly about how media affects the thinking of the people to which I replied, stressing that the dissemination of information is necessary to keep people informed.
I also said that when the people are informed of what is going on the in the country and the challenges that are being faced at the material time, they can fairly evaluate the performance of the government of the day.
The issue, presently is that people are prone to misinformation or rather information that supports their confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias is the tendency of people to favour information that confirms or strengthens their beliefs or values and is difficult to dislodge once affirmed.
The process of inculcating confirmation biases is a rather systematic one where on social media people can choose to follow the media which serves their narrative better.
The advent of online communities such as Twitter, now known as X, and discussion-based platforms such as Reddit where the people exist in their own bubble only serves to support confirmation bias.
TikTok being the talk of the town is a platform to disseminate information, having massive influence among the internet browsing public.
One panel member, a second-year IPG student when expressing her views during the forum highlighted how journalists need to check the information they received before publishing in their news outlets.
She stressed at length on how disinformation affects the community along with the culture of the internet users. This is a manifestation of the concern of the people nowadays.
I shared that Digital Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil has initiated several measures to combat fake news.
This is in terms of ministry-wide programmes and collaboration with news agencies to introduce segments and sections to check facts.
Similarly, Fahmi’s predecessor also shared the same concern on the dissemination of fake news with a number of public service announcements and campaigns advising the people to verify information before sharing.
The issue of fake news is not new – we have been constantly at odds with disinformation. In the 80s and 90s, before the age of the internet, disinformation was spread through ‘surat layang’.
Then as we moved towards the early 2000s, we were faced with the threat of fake news through various blogs with the advent and therefore, adoption of the internet.
While these two mediums were able to sow distrust and distort facts, the physical labour of distributing letters into people’s mailboxes as well as the technical knowhows to set up a blog site made it a tedious affair.
However, now, with the age of social media and smartphones, misinformation has become something that can be perpetrated at-will.
Let’s also not forget that fake news and its dissemination as well as impact to the community can be partisan as political thoughts and ideologies seeps into the very idea of misinformation.
Statements and news items that can be considered as libellous while being celebrated or welcomed by one side of the political spectrum can be considered as a threat to the other.
It has become a multi-layered and complex problem because we cannot agree to a solution. One solution that is proposed not too long ago was to set up an independent commission to ascertain or declare fake news.
This, however, might not be a perfect solution as accusations of bias can be levelled on the commission and its members.
For now, what we can do is to educate the community to not take information at face value and rather, verify that same information, comparing it to news reports from multiple news agencies.
We should also move away from the culture of assuming the news content based on the headline as the culture of clickbait where views, likes and follows reigns supreme over basic journalistic values.
Against confirmation biases, political ideologies and indoctrination as well as ignorance, education is key.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
