## Colophon tags:: [[process]] [[&article]] [[* Misinformation and Disinformation Impact Debate]] url:: https://archive.is/Bnl4i date:: [[2025-03-22]] %% title:: The misinformation discourse is a distraction type:: [[clipped-note]] file:: published:: 2025-03-22T05:39:31Z author:: [[@archive.is]] [Click to Archive](https://web.archive.org/save/https://archive.is/Bnl4i) %% archive:: ## Notes short:: ## Full text ## The misinformation discourse is a distraction - 20250322 - fulltext --- publish: false creator: Prateek Waghre --- ## Full Text <table style="width:1028px;font-size:10px"><tbody><tr><td style="width:150px;text-align:center;vertical-align:top" rowspan="2"><a style="text-decoration:none;white-space:nowrap;color:black;margin:0px;cursor:pointer" href="https://archive.today/"><div style="font-size:24px">archive.today</div><div style="font-size:12px">webpage capture</div></a></td><td style="text-align:right;padding:3px 3px 0 3px;white-space:nowrap;vertical-align:top;font-size:14px;font-weight:bold">Saved from</td><td style="text-align:right;padding:3px 3px 0 3px;white-space:nowrap;vertical-align:top"><form style="text-align:left;margin:0"><table><tbody><tr><td style="width:450px"><input style="border:1px solid black;height:20px;margin:0 0 0 0;padding:0;width:450px"><input><input><div style="text-align:right;vertical-align:middle;font-size:10px"><span style="white-space:nowrap;padding:0;margin:0;color:gray">no other snapshots from this url</span></div></td><td style="vertical-align:top"><input style="width:6em;height:20px;padding:0;margin:0 0 0 3px"></td></tr></tbody></table></form></td><td style="text-align:right;padding:4px 5px 2px 5px;font-size:14px;white-space:nowrap;vertical-align:top" rowspan="1"><time>22 Mar 2025 05:39:31 UTC</time></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align:right;font-size:12px;padding:0 3px 3px 3px;vertical-align:top;font-weight:bold;white-space:nowrap" colspan="1">All snapshots</td><td style="text-align:left;font-size:12px;padding:0 3px 3px 3px;vertical-align:top" colspan="2" rowspan="2"><b>from host </b><a style="color:#1D2D40" href="https://archive.is/www.ft.com">www.ft.com</a></td></tr><tr><td style="vertical-align:bottom;text-align:left;white-space:nowrap" colspan="2" rowspan="2"><a style="margin-left:20px;position:relative;top:2px;text-decoration:none;display:inline-block;vertical-align:middle;padding:0 10px;line-height:24px;;font-size:12px;font-weight:bold;background-color:#EEEEEE;border-width:2px 2px 0px 2px;border-style:solid;border-color:#B40010 #B40010 #FFFAE1 #B40010;color:black" href="https://archive.is/Bnl4i">Webpage</a><a style="margin-left:10px;position:relative;top:2px;text-decoration:none;display:inline-block;vertical-align:middle;padding:0 10px;line-height:24px;;font-size:12px;background-color:#B40010;border-width:2px 2px 0px 2px;border-style:solid;border-color:#B40010;color:white" href="https://archive.is/Bnl4i/image">Screenshot</a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align:right;padding:0px 5px 5px 0;white-space:nowrap;vertical-align:bottom" colspan="2"><a style="padding-right:20px;text-decoration:underline;color:#1D2D40" href="https://archive.is/Bnl4i/share"><img style="width:16px;height:16px;border:0;position:relative;top:5px;padding-right:2px;opacity:0.5" src="https://archive.is/">share</a><a style="padding-right:20px;text-decoration:underline;color:#1D2D40" href="https://archive.is/download/Bnl4i.zip"><img style="width:18px;height:18px;border:0;position:relative;top:5px;padding-right:2px;opacity:0.5" src="https://archive.is/">download .zip</a><a style="padding-right:20px;text-decoration:underline;color:#1D2D40" href="https://archive.is/Bnl4i/abuse"><img style="width:16px;height:16px;border:0;position:relative;top:1px;padding-right:1px;opacity:0.5" src="https://archive.is/">report bug or abuse</a></td></tr></tbody></table> [Accessibility help](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.ft.com/accessibility)[Skip to navigation](https://archive.is/#site-navigation)[Skip to content](https://archive.is/#site-content)[Skip to footer](https://archive.is/#site-footer) [Open side navigation menu](https://archive.is/#o-header-drawer "Open side navigation menu") [Open search bar](https://archive.is/#o-header-search-primary "Open search bar")[Subscribe](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.ft.com/products) [Sign In](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.ft.com/login) Opinion [Data Points](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.ft.com/data-points) # The misinformation discourse is a distraction Media fragmentation and the erosion of shared sources of truth are bigger threats  [John Burn-Murdoch](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.ft.com/john-burn-murdoch)  © FT montage/Getty Images - [ The misinformation discourse is a distraction on x (opens in a new window)](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://www.ft.com/content/bbc80e1c-60a7-4f3d-a9a1-a4e68cf36912&text=The%20misinformation%20discourse%20is%20a%20distraction&via=ft) - [ The misinformation discourse is a distraction on facebook (opens in a new window)](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://www.ft.com/content/bbc80e1c-60a7-4f3d-a9a1-a4e68cf36912&t=The%20misinformation%20discourse%20is%20a%20distraction) - [ The misinformation discourse is a distraction on linkedin (opens in a new window)](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https://www.ft.com/content/bbc80e1c-60a7-4f3d-a9a1-a4e68cf36912) - current progress 67% [John Burn-Murdoch](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.ft.com/john-burn-murdoch) Published43 minutes ago [1](https://archive.is/#comments-anchor "Jump to comments section") Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. In economics, shifting from a concentrated market with a handful of dominant players to a highly competitive market of small players is usually considered a good thing. But when the products these players are targeting at different sets of consumers are alternative versions of reality as we know it, it’s not so clear that society benefits.  For all the attention given to misinformation, a narrow focus on objective falsehoods distracts us from a much more fundamental shift. The emerging democratic risk is not so much that people believe false things — they always have. It is that they no longer believe the same things as one another, false or otherwise. If this sounds overstated, try a recent example. In January, after Elon Musk drew fresh attention to Britain’s grooming gangs scandal via his social media platform X, [almost half of Reform UK voters](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/Results_YGNewsTracker_250108_w.pdf) said they had heard about the story in the news in recent days, compared with just one in 10 Labour or Lib Dem voters. This is not so much a question of whether a particular piece of information is true or false, as of whether different people encounter the same information at all. In the past, established media organisations largely followed the same news agenda, within national boundaries. But in an increasingly borderless and splintered information environment, the old gatekeepers and [norms](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://academic.oup.com/book/57946) are increasingly bypassed. This has led to the ongoing [bifurcation](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.ft.com/content/65961fec-a5ab-4c71-b1c8-265be3583a93) of publishing platforms online, including social media, into overtly right- and left-leaning spaces, where different agendas abound. As a dual citizen of X and Bluesky, there are clear differences in the topics I see on the two platforms. Here’s another [weakness of the misinformation discourse](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716214555474%23:~:text=By%20promoting%20the,effective%20science%20communication): that this is uniquely a problem on one “side”. Research finds that while America’s conservatives are on average more likely to believe false statements about climate change, [liberals](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716214555474%23bibr28-0002716214555474:~:text=liberals%20were%20more%20accurate%20in%20their%20beliefs%20about%20climate%20change%20and%20human%20evolution%20whereas%20conservatives%20were%20more%20accurate%20about%20fracking%20and%20nuclear%20power) are more likely to believe false statements about nuclear power. [Other studies](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2409329121%23:~:text=Education%20did%20not%20have%20a%20credible%20effect%20on%20discrimination%20ability) of the US find those who went to college are no better judges of news veracity than those with only high school education. I don’t highlight this to criticise any particular group. Quite the contrary. I do so to emphasise that most people — left, right, more and less educated — simply don’t interrogate every claim they encounter. Humans are efficiency-maximisers, seeking shortcuts at every opportunity. The truth is the vast majority of us are never going to invest time fact-checking or evaluating all the information we consume. If it seems plausible and [comes from a source we don’t actively distrust](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563223003436), that’s good enough. Combine this heuristic with the explosion of [upstart information providers](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-06/RISJ_DNR_2024_Digital_v10%20lr.pdf%23page=54), who tend to operate in pockets of an unprecedentedly fragmented media landscape, and you will get interesting results. While the evidence on echo chambers and filter bubbles has been [mixed](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/echo-chambers-filter-bubbles-and-polarisation-literature-review) to date, most research predates the very recent shift to [finely tuned real-time recommendation algorithms](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.07663). Analysing data from the British Election Study, I found that people who got their news from TikTok were more likely to become supporters of Reform UK between 2021 and 2024 than those who didn’t, even after controlling for age, sex and education level. Notably, the pattern is much stronger among men than women, consistent with the idea that different groups now inhabit quite distinct information and political environments online — even within the same platforms.  Similarly, in Germany, the [strong TikTok presence](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.npr.org/2025/03/15/nx-s1-5327244/germanys-youth-vote-is-increasingly-polarized-why%23:~:text=perhaps%20the%20most%20important%20reason%20for%20young%20voters%20heading%20to%20the%20extremes%20are%20the%20devices%20they%20are%20holding%20in%20their%20hands) of both the AfD and Die Linke is believed by some to have boosted their support among young men and women respectively, contributing to a [stark gender gap](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.ft.com/content/d070339c-a67c-4a31-8e2f-aef016296b08) between young Germans’ voting patterns in last month’s election. The link between this fragmentation and democratic dysfunction shows up everywhere you look. America’s [polarised media ecosystem](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.ft.com/content/a2050877-124a-472d-925a-fc794737d814) is matched by far wider political divides than in nations with more cohesive media landscapes. Longitudinal studies [find](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/ali-yurukoglu-how-biased-news-impacts-your-vote) a divided media engenders polarised politics. And looking across age ranges, young people, whose information sources differ most starkly both from previous generations and from one another (in terms of young men and young women), now display the widest ideological divide on many measures. The [misinformation discourse](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://www.writingruxandrabio.com/p/misinformation-studies-as-scientific) will doubtless rumble on, but like the teen glued to the screen, it misses the broader context. [*[email protected]*](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&[email protected])*,* [*@jburnmurdoch*](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch) ### Data sources and methodology The analysis of the association between TikTok usage and support for Reform UK in the UK general election was carried out using waves 21 and 28 of the British Election Study, which follows the same British adults over several years, measuring how their political views and other attitudes shift over time. A logistic regression model was used to predict the likelihood of someone voting for Reform UK in the 2024 election, conditional on their prior support for Reform and self-placement on the political left-right scale (both measured three years earlier), their use of different social media platforms for news, as well as their sex, age and education level. Interaction terms were included for the interplay between social media platform and sex, on the assumption that different people may see different content on each platform. You can find the R code to reproduce the analysis [here](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://gist.github.com/johnburnmurdoch/f8e7448d0cacb06ddc766c40d6859035). [Copyright](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://help.ft.com/help/legal-privacy/copyright/copyright-policy/) The Financial Times Limited 2025. All rights reserved. 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FT and ‘Financial Times’ are trademarks of The Financial Times Ltd. The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the [FT Editorial Code of Practice](https://archive.is/o/Bnl4i/https://aboutus.ft.com/en-gb/ft-editorial-code/). | [0%](https://archive.is/#0%) | | --- | | | | [10%](https://archive.is/#10%) | | | | [20%](https://archive.is/#20%) | | | | [30%](https://archive.is/#30%) | | | | [40%](https://archive.is/#40%) | | | | [50%](https://archive.is/#50%) | | | | [60%](https://archive.is/#60%) | | | | [70%](https://archive.is/#70%) | | | | [80%](https://archive.is/#80%) | | | | [90%](https://archive.is/#90%) | | | | [100%](https://archive.is/#100%) |   ## Colophon title:: The misinformation discourse is a distraction type:: [[full-text]] url:: https://archive.is/Bnl4i date:: [[2025-03-22]] published:: 2025-03-22T05:39:31Z