The ‘misinformation’ crisis is fake news

Most voters are not the unwitting saps liberal commentators make them out to be

Photo: Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Are millions of citizens being manipulated by nefarious characters on social media? Are the political contours across Britain, the US and the rest of the West shifting as a consequence of misinformation and disinformation being fed to voters online? Are we all such easy prey for fake news bots, conspiracy theorists and algorithms?

According to much media and political commentary over recent years, the answer to each of those questions is yes. So acute is the problem, we are told, that democracy itself is under threat, and the only solution is ever more suffocating restrictions on what may be said or written in the public arena.

I find such a theory deeply unconvincing. First, because it is just too convenient. How much easier it is to lay the blame for the unrest that is prevalent – and has been for a long time now – in many of our communities at the door of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’, rather than acknowledge that there are deep-seated problems of economic insecurity and social disintegration that will take time, investment and a good dose of contrition on the part of some to remedy (if indeed they might be remedied at all).

Second, I just don’t think it’s true. While a minority may be impressionable enough to be attracted to some of the tidewrack that washes up on the wilder shores of the internet, most people, I am sure, are not such gullible dupes. What they feel and believe they invariably do so out of their own cold reasoning and lived experience.