To build on this, my personal belief is most counter-disinformation work fails to address the fundamental issues that lead to the creation of disinformation, and generally misunderstands the source of disinformation in the first place.
https://twitter.com/carljackmiller/status/1583379174483296256
The focus is often on outside actors (ie Russia) influencing communities through disinformation, when the reality is its more often communities themselves who create disinformation through their own efforts to counter what they see as disinformation.
That's then amplified by state actors when it suits their needs, so to truly address disinformation we need to understand why those communities create disinformation, and look at how to address that.
Mapping out networks and creating endless fact checking websites doesn't really do that much to counter disinformation. We need to address the root causes, not the symptoms.
The one thing that comes up time and time again in the communities that create disinformation is their distrust in traditional sources of authority, generally rooted in legitimate concerns of the community and acts of betrayal from those sources of authority.
For example, the Invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the lies told to support the war by the US and UK governments, is one of these moments why traditional sources of authority betrayed the trust of the public, and drove people to seek alternative sources of authority.
Now to be clear, there's nothing wrong with that, the problem comes when individuals define their entire world view on those issues, and have it reinforced by online communities which draw them towards more extreme versions of their beliefs.
What I like to describe as traumatic moral injury comes into play, where an individuals entire world view is coloured by the moral injury they suffer from these events.
They then seek out online communities who agree with their beliefs, and reinforce their beliefs, providing more examples, and framing current and future events in terms of those past betrayals.
Within those communities you have individuals and groups who promote more extreme versions of those beliefs, and individuals are drawn towards the most extreme version of those beliefs they're able to hold.
Those who feel a lack of control and disempowerment now find themselves in a supportive community that give them a sense of empowerment and control, although generally this is an illusion or expressed in a negative fashion (such as online harassment replacing real activism).
And these people don't become part of these communities to create and spread disinformation, they do it because they believe (often correctly) that they're being deceived, so seek to correct the record.
The problem is their own biases, fuelled by traumatic moral injury, means any conclusion that supports the perceived position of those responsible for that injury is unacceptable, so alternative, increasing absurd, answers must be correct.
And they have a whole community who will provide those answers, and create even more answers when those first ones don't really pan out. The comfort of always being right, even when you're always proven wrong.
And, as we see frequently with Russia, you'll see state actors who use these communities to amplify messages that are beneficial to them, giving platforms, and sometimes even involving their intelligence services.
In the most extreme examples of this state level engagement with counterfactual communities you just have to look over to the US and the Republican Party. They've welcomed them with open arms and infected their entire movement with conspiracy theorists.
But it's a lot easier to point the finger at Russia then address Western politicians and their media allies embracing conspiracy theorists and fringe movements, or the more complex issues of positively engaging communities to address the issues that concern them.
How do we really empower people to make a positive change on those issues? It's difficult, there's no one size fits all solution, but at Bellingcat we think it's important to both educate and empower people, starting at an early age.
At Bellingcat we're working with partners to develop a curriculum for schools to teach students investigative techniques, building on the earlier work of The Student View thestudentview.org
The idea is not to turn them into mini-journalists, but equip them with the skills to contribute positively to their social circles and communities, understanding and addressing issues that concern them, and making that something they can keep with them beyond their school years.
I found this example from The Student View in Bradford very inspirational, students shown how to do freedom of information requests to the police to find out why there's so many high speed police chases on their streets
It taught them a technique to address an issue that was happening in their local area that impacts them, and helped address those issues, giving them a sense of positive empowerment. That's what we need to build if we want to address the root cause of disinformation.
But beyond education this requires building networks and communities that can help ensure that investigations like this can have impact, and that means connecting to a wide variety of actors who want to engage with this sort of work.
We've seen this happening around the work of Bellingcat, so my hope is we can develop that in a more structured and sustained manner, building a broad base of support and engagement.
As an aside, I also think there should be a more holistic approach to understanding disinformation, as I believe there's a lot of commonality between a broad range of counterfactual communities.
On the surface the QAnon, Flat Earth and anti-White Helmets community might all seem very different, but if you look at the root causes that bring them together in the first place the fundamental distrust in traditional sources of authority seems to be a common theme.
If you look at how Covid conspiracies emerged from the alternative health communities you'll see a lot of people who have had very bad experiences with medical professionals, another traditional source of authority.
There's also covid conspiracies communities that are more fuelled by the distrust of government, and that leads to an overlap between different communities with different forms of distrust.
And then you start seeing that crossover in forms of distrust that fuels both the communities as they overlap.
David Miller is a really great example of someone who is fully engulfed in this whole process, just follow the thread and see how quickly he blames it all on the West and uses that to justify his opposition to it
https://twitter.com/hurryupharry/status/1583411825588469761?t=q9GvirtV88tas2kwFANeSA&s=19
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