Speaker 1: Like so many stories about misinformation, this one starts with
Speaker 1: a social media post.
Speaker 2: US President Donald Trump posting late last night, Australia is
Speaker 2: making a terrible humanitarian mistake.
Speaker 3: Prime Minister give asylum.
Speaker 4: He was calling on Australia to make sure that the
Speaker 4: team was not forced to go back to Iran, saying
Speaker 4: that they would most likely be killed, a calling on
Speaker 4: Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanesi to grant them asylum.
Speaker 1: Not long after that, Donald Trump backtracked and set the
Speaker 1: record straight.
Speaker 5: In a truth social post.
Speaker 4: The President says Albanese is on it. Five players have
Speaker 4: already been taken care of and the rest are on
Speaker 4: their way home.
Speaker 1: But in those few short hours before it was clarified,
Speaker 1: misinformation had already taken hold. Social media posts that accused
Speaker 1: Australia of not helping their running women's soccer team and
Speaker 1: falsely claimed Albanesi lied to Trump about giving them asylum
Speaker 1: were viewed millions of times on x and some mainstream
Speaker 1: media got the story wrong, portraying Trump as the trigger
Speaker 1: for Albow's decision. A key person involved in this the
Speaker 1: President of the United States. He of course, posted on
Speaker 1: truth social Australia is making This is just one example
Speaker 1: of the wave of misinformation we're drowning in as we
Speaker 1: struggle to figure out what's true and what's just been
Speaker 1: made up. I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven
Speaker 1: AM today, ABC journalist and host of a new doco,
Speaker 1: The Matter of Facts, Hamish McDonald on how do we
Speaker 1: work out what to believe in a post truth world?
Speaker 1: It's Monday, March twenty three. Hamish, we just heard this
Speaker 1: example about Trump and the Iranian women's soccer team. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to misinformation and disinformation, that is probably
Speaker 1: just a drop in the ocean. So what are some
Speaker 1: of the examples that you came across that really shocked you?
Speaker 1: And what is the difference between misinformation and disinformation anyway, So.
Speaker 2: Misinformation broadly, and there are slightly different interpretations of this,
Speaker 2: but broadly misinformation can be false information, but the person
Speaker 2: who's spreading it or share it might think that it's true.
Speaker 2: So this example you just had then of Trump and
Speaker 2: the Iranian women's soccer team, I think that's probably a
Speaker 2: strong example of misinformation. Disinformation is where it's deliberate false information,
Speaker 2: maybe even created knowing that it's false, and then disseminated,
Speaker 2: perhaps for a specific or a vague purpose, sometimes by
Speaker 2: another country that's trying to sow a particular narrative thread
Speaker 2: into another country's information system. Or it might be individuals
Speaker 2: or organizations or lobby groups, or just trolls and bots.
Speaker 2: A lot of the time the disinformation is literally being
Speaker 2: made by computers at the moment and then finding its
Speaker 2: way into your social media feed, and there's a lot
Speaker 2: of it. It's everywhere, like stories that we've covered and
Speaker 2: reported on recently, things like the Bondai terror attack. I
Speaker 2: remember in the days after that a colleague coming to
Speaker 2: me and saying, oh, have you seen this photograph of
Speaker 2: the two female police officers standing by and not doing anything? Actually,
Speaker 2: the original wider view of that image shows some very
Speaker 2: compassionate police officers trying to ward off members of the
Speaker 2: public from going near the active shooter situation.
Speaker 1: The later stats from the country's media regulator shows more
Speaker 1: than seventy percent of Australians think that they've come across
Speaker 1: misinformation online. So how savvy do you think we are
Speaker 1: really about trying to work out what's real and what's not.
Speaker 2: The headline news Nikki is that we're not very good.
Speaker 2: What emerged for us as we made this series and
Speaker 2: conducted a series of social experiments with Australians just engaging
Speaker 2: with media and information is that the better that you
Speaker 2: think you are at spotting a fake, the less likely
Speaker 2: you are to actually identify it accurately. And this is
Speaker 2: essentially because our brains are trained to trick us, and
Speaker 2: so if we think that we're onto it, it kind
Speaker 2: of reduces our chances of spotting the fake image.
Speaker 1: What about your mum?
Speaker 2: My wonderful mum was doved in to this TV series
Speaker 2: to see whether or not she could spot a fake
Speaker 2: version of me. And the case here is that I've
Speaker 2: been learning to do Scottish dancing or Highland dancing.
Speaker 4: So you know, I've been.
Speaker 2: Very busy, Yes, always busy. I've been working on this
Speaker 2: as well as other things, but I've also been learning
Speaker 2: some new skills, all right. What was really interesting was
Speaker 2: kind of observing not just the mind game unfold for Mum,
Speaker 2: that kind of quizzical look and that sort of nervousness
Speaker 2: and caution and discomfort that I think we all experience
Speaker 2: when we're not sure whether what we're looking at is
Speaker 2: real or fake?
Speaker 6: Oh my gorgeous.
Speaker 2: But then as it unfolded, as she realized that it
Speaker 2: was a fake and that she was kind of half tricked,
Speaker 2: the emotion that came with that. Do you look out
Speaker 2: very eyed?
Speaker 1: Do you think?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I do look at things that are and
Speaker 5: I do spot them usually.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it has rattled me.
Speaker 2: It's very clever.
Speaker 3: Love you, Love you too.
Speaker 2: And I think for me that that was quite profound,
Speaker 2: because it is unsettling for us if we have a
Speaker 2: realization that we can't believe the very thing that is
Speaker 2: right in front of our eyes. It's kind of profound
Speaker 2: for that reason, because I think it speaks to the
Speaker 2: the inner the kind of primal instinct that we all have,
Speaker 2: which wants to believe what what we can see and
Speaker 2: feel in touch. And maybe that's no longer the case.
Speaker 1: I've seen you in a photo of a kilt, so
Speaker 1: I can understand why your mum thought you might be
Speaker 1: up for the dancing. But we know, Haimo, that there
Speaker 1: is this sort of growing suspicion around the world about facts,
Speaker 1: definitely about the mainstream media. How dangerous do you think
Speaker 1: that is for our democracy? If people can't even agree
Speaker 1: on what's real anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think for me that's the kind of core
Speaker 2: question underpinning this whole series is what happens to democratic society,
Speaker 2: what happens to community, what happens to our ability to
Speaker 2: solve problems if we can't agree on a set of
Speaker 2: facts to begin with. And I actually think it is
Speaker 2: a really profound challenge for us. Do you remember when
Speaker 2: Trump first got elected and Kellyanne Conway gave that interview
Speaker 2: and she talked about, well, there are alternative facts. That
Speaker 2: was shocking at the time.
Speaker 4: You're saying it's a falsehood, and they're giving Sean Spacer,
Speaker 4: our Press secretary geb alternative facts to that.
Speaker 1: But the point.
Speaker 5: Alternative facts, alternative facts. Four of the five facts he uttered.
Speaker 5: The one thing he got Zeke Miller, four of the
Speaker 5: five facts he uttered, We're just not true. Look, alternative
Speaker 5: facts are not facts, they're falsehoods.
Speaker 2: But that was only what do we say, like six
Speaker 2: to ten years ago, And think about the world we
Speaker 2: exist in now. Almost everyone seems to have their own
Speaker 2: set of facts, and I think we have to consider,
Speaker 2: we have to ask ourselves what happens to functioning democratic,
Speaker 2: enfranchised society where everyone has a stake if everyone's just
Speaker 2: allowed to have their own set of facts, and we
Speaker 2: can't agree on a set of facts to.
Speaker 1: Begin with, coming up what to do when so much
Speaker 1: of what we see is untrue heymish. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: disinformation and how it's being used in war, especially in
Speaker 1: countries like Russia.
Speaker 2: So we traveled to the Poland Belarus border as part
Speaker 2: of this series to look at a concept called hybrid
Speaker 2: warfare grey zone tactics you might have heard of before.
Speaker 2: The accusation that Poland and the European Union level at
Speaker 2: Russia is that they're heavily engaged in grey zone tactics.
Speaker 2: In this instance, the assertion is that Russia and Belarus,
Speaker 2: which is essentially a client state or vassal state of Russia,
Speaker 2: have been deliberately bringing migrants from Africa the Middle East
Speaker 2: to the Polish border, where there's a huge six meters
Speaker 2: high fence and forcing them over.
Speaker 4: It is an abuse of some of the world's most
Speaker 4: vulnerable people, migrants turned into weapons in a political battle.
Speaker 7: We absolutely share the assessment that this is a hybrid
Speaker 7: attack of an authoritarian regime to try to destabilize democratic neighbors,
Speaker 7: and this will not succeed.
Speaker 2: And so this happens at particular times in the electoral cycle.
Speaker 2: And this is coupled with floods of disinformation being sent
Speaker 2: through the domestic social media channels. So in local Polish
Speaker 2: language social media images footage sometimes manipulated posts about all
Speaker 2: of these people coming from the Middle East, Arabs or
Speaker 2: Africans coming. They're gonna build a mosque in your village. Look,
Speaker 2: your government's lost control of the borders.
Speaker 8: On Saturday, thousands of people took part in anti immigration
Speaker 8: marches organized by the Farret Confederation party. The marches took
Speaker 8: place in more than eighty cities across Poland. Demonstrators demanded
Speaker 8: the closure of the border.
Speaker 2: What we found is that not only is this happening
Speaker 2: in the sort of digital sphere, but there's actually real
Speaker 2: humans that are getting caught up in this. So went
Speaker 2: to the Belarus border, walked for hours into this deep
Speaker 2: dense forest.
Speaker 3: They've just received a request for help from two people
Speaker 3: from Afghanistan and they're waiting right now for their individual.
Speaker 2: Needs to find at a pin in a map. Two
Speaker 2: Afghans that had been brought on these cheap visas, with
Speaker 2: these cheap travel packages promised to cheap an easy way
Speaker 2: into Europe, only to then find themselves stuck and stranded
Speaker 2: in this primeval forest in eastern Europe. One of them
Speaker 2: his wound was so thick and deep it looked like
Speaker 2: it was turning septic. It's a very big word, and
Speaker 2: it's probabetical attention. So there's a there's a genuine human
Speaker 2: cost to this. But in terms of the objective, often
Speaker 2: it's deliberately ambiguous. It's not clear necessarily that Russia is
Speaker 2: trying to get one political party or another elected. It's
Speaker 2: to sow confusion, it's to so doubt, it's to undermine
Speaker 2: trust in democratic process and government and institutions. It's designed
Speaker 2: to make people confused and hamish.
Speaker 1: We know that some countries are also using these types
Speaker 1: of disinformation campaigns instead of going to war, for example, China,
Speaker 1: they've really been going to town with all of their
Speaker 1: online messaging regarding Taiwan. So what did you find out there?
Speaker 1: What are they doing, what are they saying and is
Speaker 1: it even working?
Speaker 2: As with all missing disinformation, it's often a bit opaque.
Speaker 2: But I think what you can observe is that there
Speaker 2: are very clearly disinformation campaigns that are run against pro
Speaker 2: independence politicians. So that's very clear. That's overt that's well documented.
Speaker 2: But then there is the more subtle stuff, the sort
Speaker 2: of narratives, the music, the Chinese mainland nationalist ideology that
Speaker 2: is pushed through some of these more subtle media mechanisms.
Speaker 2: It could be a musician, it could be a cartoon.
Speaker 2: I think Taiwan is a fascinating example because the population
Speaker 2: is so aware and are so alive to the threat
Speaker 2: of China that they're quite motivated. They're quite activated on
Speaker 2: these issues in a way that I don't think we
Speaker 2: necessarily are in Australia. So they think about arming themselves
Speaker 2: both physically, you know, with self defense classes against a
Speaker 2: possible mainland Chinese invasion at some point, but they are
Speaker 2: also training themselves in navigating this and disinformation media literacy awareness,
Speaker 2: how do we combat this. They were the first jurisdiction
Speaker 2: in the world to have a disinformation minister.
Speaker 6: Always look at this foreign adversary or attacks were as
Speaker 6: our natural disasters, as ways for conflict to not turn
Speaker 6: into explosion, but rather see them like fire on the ground,
Speaker 6: not to be put out.
Speaker 2: And I think they're really interesting because they're also looking
Speaker 2: at ways that you might be able to use some
Speaker 2: of this technology that's emerging to fight back against this.
Speaker 3: If we have done effecta king, we need to promote
Speaker 3: our affectaking results to people we try to dissemine, add
Speaker 3: those spectacle poles through all the social media where we
Speaker 3: collect those disinformation and rumorous.
Speaker 1: Hamish. It all sounds very overwhelming. We have so much
Speaker 1: information constantly coming at us in all directions. So is
Speaker 1: there anything we can really do about this? Can we
Speaker 1: combat it? Regulate it? Is there any way to hold
Speaker 1: back this tide of information that we're drowning in, especially
Speaker 1: when so much of it is simply not true.
Speaker 2: Certainly regulation is an option, but I think we've seen
Speaker 2: with the under sixteen social media ban that's incredibly difficult
Speaker 2: to do. Not impossible, but very difficult to do. It's
Speaker 2: also complicated territory if you have governments getting into determining
Speaker 2: what is real and fake, what's miss and disinformation. Because
Speaker 2: obviously some of this you know at least that the
Speaker 2: fringes can be somewhat open to interpretation. That said, something
Speaker 2: that really for me is a positive and gives me
Speaker 2: heart in all of this, is that to some extent
Speaker 2: the best responses are individual ones. You can arm yourself.
Speaker 2: You know, in Finland they're teaching miss and disinformation and
Speaker 2: media literacy skills two children from primary school up. So
Speaker 2: everything from like triangulating information. If you read something on
Speaker 2: social media or see something on social media, if that
Speaker 2: makes you feel alarmed or provokes an emotional reaction, and
Speaker 2: learn that that's a red flag for you. That means
Speaker 2: you need to go and find at least two other
Speaker 2: sources of information on that same story, from reliable, trusted
Speaker 2: sources of information and news, and make sure you go
Speaker 2: to their websites, not their social media pages, go to
Speaker 2: the actual source of the information. So these are the
Speaker 2: sorts of things I think we clearly could be teaching
Speaker 2: to children in Australia. And the other thing is we
Speaker 2: meet this fantastic academic Marion Wolf, who's studying the impacts
Speaker 2: of all of this digital consumption on our brain. She says,
Speaker 2: the single greatest act of defiance that you as an
Speaker 2: individual can do in this age of AI and missing
Speaker 2: disinformation is to pick up a physical book. A physical book,
Speaker 2: sit down and read. It can be fiction, can be nonfiction,
Speaker 2: but it is good for your brain. It is good
Speaker 2: for your soul. It is good for your heart to
Speaker 2: pick up a physical book and read it, and that
Speaker 2: is a powerful tool.
Speaker 1: Couldn't agree more, Hamish, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 8: It's been great to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Go read your book, Niki.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, one Nation looks to have achieved
Speaker 1: its best electoral result in nearly thirty years, its vote
Speaker 1: surging the South Australian state election. It will take days
Speaker 1: to determine how many seats the party will hold, but
Speaker 1: Pauline Hansen has warned every winning candidate will be a
Speaker 1: political landmine for Premier Peter Malinowskis. Malinowskas claimed Labour's largest
Speaker 1: victory in South Australia's history, while the Liberal Party vote collapsed,
Speaker 1: and Energy Minister Chris Bowen says the federal government is
Speaker 1: not contemplating fuel rationing. Bowen says the Fuel Emergency Act
Speaker 1: is only to be invoked in extreme shortages and has
Speaker 1: never been used. So far, only six of eighty one
Speaker 1: ships carrying fuel to Australia have been canceled, but a
Speaker 1: one hundred percent increase in demand has seen shortages, particularly
Speaker 1: in regional areas. I'm Nicole Johnston. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening,