Search for truth
Issue 146 - 4 July 2023 (9-min read)
Misinformation has been widely established as a big problem of our times even if it can be argued that it has existed as far back as ancient Greece. But, very often, our conversation on how to address this problem focuses on treating the symptoms and not addressing the deeper issues at play.
This week, The Global Tiller had a chance to delve deeper into those issues. I had the opportunity to meet the newest cohort of the East-West Center’s Asia Pacific Leadership Program, which comprises 21 participants from 15 different countries, and talk with them about 'Misinformation and Social Truth: Pitfalls of Creating a Shared Reality'.
The biggest hurdle that comes up when we think about addressing misinformation is who should be the one taking action. Should it be the news media, considering journalists are the gatekeepers of information and have traditionally been entrusted with keeping the population informed. But I foresee several problems here.
The news media is no longer a single entity. Gone are the days when we were getting our daily news from the state TV or newspaper. Media across the world are run by private companies and each of them have different owners. Can we really expect corporations to come together and arrive at a common understanding or a game plan for how to address misinformation, especially given the fact that some media outlets are created for the sole purpose of putting out 'alternate facts' or misinformation? The media also doesn’t have any oversight over its operations. Especially for privately owned media, it is only answerable to the CEOs, or shareholders, not their subscribers or viewers. The media is as diverse as the political opinions in society and, therefore, each side gets the information it agrees with.
So, if media cannot be relied upon to address misinformation, should it be the tech companies? After all, it is these social media companies that have accelerated how fast misinformation travels and how viral divisive content becomes. But it would be naive to expect social media companies to address the misinformation crisis when their entire business model relies on how much time people are spending on their platforms, and studies have shown that the more divisive the content, the more engagement it will generate.
Let’s look at the case of Facebook. Their Feed used to be designed chronologically, where updates from friends would be listed in reverse order with the most recent ones appearing first. But, since 2009, this has changed. The Feed is now driven by engagement, which depends on dozens of factors, from who posted the content to their frequency of posts and the average time spent on this piece of content. Posts with higher engagement scores are included and prioritised; posts with lower scores are buried or excluded altogether. The problem with such sorting, of course, is that incendiary, polarizing posts consistently achieve high engagement.
So, it can’t be the media nor the tech companies. Should the government be the one addressing misinformation? Surely, that has been the popular choice given how many governments have taken up this role by passing laws regulating online speech, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. But, in both democracies and pseudo-democracies alike, these laws regulating misinformation have been used to clamp down on actual dissent. It doesn’t come as a surprise though because when authorities are in charge of objectivity, who objects to the authorities?
The motives are at odds. Governments need singular 'social truths' to maintain societal cohesion, while truth isn’t that simple. Political authorities are not known to differentiate between disinformation, misinformation or merely inconvenient truths, so putting them in charge as gatekeepers of information is setting ourselves up for dogma.
In the end, addressing misinformation in itself is a complex task — one that requires interventions not just by one or the other institution but society as a whole. It requires us to think deeper into what purpose facts, narratives and truth serve in our society.
It doesn’t matter whether you live in a democracy or an authoritarian regime or somewhere else along the spectrum, having a shared reality is crucial to any society, whose members have to agree on a set of principles, values and shared histories. You may call it 'serviceable truth, public knowledge, national ideology, or even social truth — the fact remains that a common narrative is what allows us to form communities.
What this infodemic has done is that it has challenged this social truth. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic exposed the faultiness of our societies, most countries around the globe were questioning their truth. If France’s social truth is anti-multiculturalism, why does it have overseas territories and why did it colonise African nations? If Pakistan’s social truth is a Muslim-majority country where minorities are treated well (as declared by its founder at Independence, then why does its constitution paint a bull’s eye on one minority, the Ahmedis?
If you’re concerned about your own country’s future, I leave you with the same questions I asked the leadership cohort: what is the source of your country’s social truth, who is the source of this truth and what are some challenges to this truth? Perhaps if we can figure out the answer to these questions, we may make some headway in addressing the misinformation crisis.
Until next time, take care and stay safe!
Hira - Editor - The Global Tiller
Dig Deeper
Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
…and now what?
What’s reality and what’s truth? There are no single answers to these questions obviously and it becomes even harder when you start envisioning these concepts at the scale of a community. Knowing that our individual experiences are limited to the borders of our brains, it appears not an easy task to be able to share those experiences and build a shared reality out of it.
Yet, our brains have an incredible ability to build stories and narratives. From creating myths or institutions all the way to the concept of synthetic happiness, our brains are powerful story machines that provide us with the ability to weave experiences, senses, feelings, memories and ideas all together to create a world of our own and a world for us all.
Still, while thinking about all this, I can’t stop revisiting the myth of Plato’s cave and the contradiction that he brings (consciously or not) in his famous “Republic”. While Plato shares this metaphor of human beings trapped in a cave, looking at the wall, being fed reflections of images carried by “others” in the back, in front of the fire. Trapped in our social situation, we tend to only see what “others” (governments, media and many others) want us to see and it’s not until we break out from our chains that we can finally turn around, see the whole trickery and get out of the cave to reality itself.
But in his same thought Plato also tries to convince us that the best way for a society to be governed is by letting the philosophers take over and lead us. As the wisest of the wises, Plato refuses power be shared to everyone and prefers a regime where the savvy lead while others follow. In that way, Plato eventually seems to refuse to let go of power and this ability, while in power, to define the reality for everyone else in the cave.
Is it the leader’s role? Are leaders bound to be those shaping the fabric of our shared realities? Are they the ones passing shapes and forms in front of the fire to reflect on the walls of our societies for everyone to see and follow?
It may seem indeed that at one point someone needs to say what is real or not. The only other way is through consensus and consensus is never easy: it takes time, it requires long discussions and to establish shared and agreed-upon values that, in our day and age, we seem to struggle to find as our societies are more and more polarised and divided on the foundational definition of what is real or not.
In an age where stories are becoming so omnipresent in our lives, it is important to question the role of leaders in shaping the collective reality, the collective truth.
If one could easily argue that leaders in power are the brokers of stories, narratives and, eventually, the shared reality, some could think of those against the power in place to question, debate or even fight this reality to build a new one. But eventually, leaders are those fighting for a specific reality (that we often call vision).
This is a thin line to walk: building a reality that reflects the lived experience of everyone while making it fit the goals and vision of the leader and the community. You go too far to one side and we end up living in an esoteric reality that will create dissonance as too distant from the experiences of the people living it (within which counts all the scientists and other “truth seekers” trying to make sense). You go too far the other side and we deprive everyone from aspiration and, potentially, go back to the basic state of evolution.
So what should leaders do eventually? Potentially first acknowledge the Relativity of our narratives and stories and remember that narratives and social truths are as true as the community that agrees to live by them and thus potentially be willing to question them. No story is absolutely true, no narrative is bound to last eternally. Leaders thus need to be adaptive and willing to question the fundamentals of their knowledge and understanding.
Second, focus on Empathy and be willing to build visions and stories not by themselves but with the community. But connecting and creating a space each other to activate their own power, the narrative being built will be more representative of everyone and of the community.
Third, acknowledge the need for Aspiration. Facts are important to make sense of our experiences but it doesn’t mean that we should get rid of all the myths, legends and other narratives that push people toward a bigger picture. Take from an agnostic almost-atheist, I do recognise the role of spirituality and mythology in people’s lives and aspirations.
Finally, build Leadership as a space for collective interactions within which everyone, especially those who are willing to step up, be allowed to take action, to do the hard work, to do more when others may not be willing to.
Maybe through all those we can finally get out of the cave, not fall into Plato’s trap of denying our own role in this cave and build a R.E.A.L.ity that will fit the needs of our times, the necessity of connections and the dreams of tomorrow.
Philippe - Founder & CEO - Pacific Ventury