Explainer: How To Spot Election Disinformation On Social Media

Nik Dirga
Digital Explainer Editor

Explainer – No,
Labour hasn’t promised to make Jacinda Ardern
governor-general, Christopher Luxon isn’t planning to
abolish Labour Day, and Chris Hipkins isn’t dead – that’s
just some of the false information circulating in the final
days before New Zealand’s election.

With AI slop
adding a whole new dimension to online misinformation, how
can voters know what’s real and what’s not?

Worried
about it? That’s all right, said Sean Lyons, chief online
safety officer at Netsafe.

“That’s a good sign if
we’re spotting those things and we are concerned about
them,” he said.

Here are some tips about how to
navigate the twists and turns of social media before
election day.

First off, what’s the
difference between misinformation and
disinformation?

Misinformation is
false information spread unintentionally without harmful
intent – perhaps a rumour being passed along, a Facebook
post being shared.

Disinformation is false
information that is deliberately spread with harmful intent
– a post that lies about a candidate’s personal life, for
instance, or accuses them of a crime.

And we’re also
seeing malinformation, which is true information used
with malice – presented out of context, or with details
omitted. That’s harder to pin down, but an example could be
a post about medicine emphasising some rare side effects
without explaining that they’re rare.

It’s important
to distinguish between legitimate campaigning and content
intentionally created to deceive, although the lines between
the two can get blurry.

Many political candidates may
stretch the truth or make misleading claims about their
opponents, but there are also many actors out there whose
only goal is to spread disinformation online.

A
Facebook page run from Vietnam and Canada spread a series of
wild claims about Labour leader Chris Hipkins earlier this
year, as
debunked by AAP Factcheck.

The factchecking
journalists said the claims by the page attracted thousands
of views, and included false claims Hipkins was suing TVNZ,
about his partner, and even that he was apparently dead.
None of these were true and the posts frequently used
AI-generated images.

Some social media pages present
themselves as satire, such as one claiming National will
abolish Labour Day and create a new ‘National Day’ if
re-elected – but that doesn’t stop satirical posts from
frequently escaping containment and being shared as if
factual.

Another page that claims to provide
“reporting on Oceania” unleashes a steady flood of political
posts aimed to generate engagement, and earlier this month
promoted a false claim that Hipkins has promised to make
Jacinda Ardern the next governor-general, as AAP
Factcheck reported.

First tip: Think
before you share

Sharing a post is easy, and
it’s one of the big reasons misinformation can spread like
wildfire.

Netsafe’s research around people who have
shared misinformation turned up some interesting trends,
Lyons said.

With many people, “at the point of
sharing, all they had done is read the headline. They hadn’t
read the source of what it was”.

“When we talk about
issues of democracy, issues of human rights, whatever that
might be, we probably owe it to ourselves and the people
around us, to read a little more beyond the headline, to
start looking at the body of what it is that we’re
sharing.”

It’s OK to be sceptical of what you see
online, said Bronwyn Isaacs, a University of Waikato
anthropology lecturer specialising in the cultural politics
of AI.

“The fact that we are critical and hesitant to
trust what we’re seeing is not necessarily a bad thing,
because we are encountering a lot of content online that is
potentially either disinformation or
misinformation.”

On social media, seeing something a
friend posts can sometimes make it seem more legitimate,
Lyons said.

“Other people put extra load on that
saying well, you know, that person shared it, I know them
and I trust them.”

Second tip: Consider the
source

Many social media pages may present
themselves as a news source with authoritative sounding
names like “NZ News Hub,” a page that was found to be
spewing out misleading AI-generated slop and fake news as
reported by RNZ earlier this year.

Lyons said it
pays to be careful to look closer at who the source really
is before sharing.

“People may be involved in the
proliferation of that, without any idea that they are,
because to them, they’ve seen it on a news network. They may
have thought they were looking at CNN but they were looking
at ‘CNNNNN.'”

Some sites will use deliberate attempts
to obfuscate their identity, burying information in a link
chain.

“It’s commonly done and it’s a technique
designed to make it hard for us to find out what the
original source is.”

Facebook pages are required to
provide transparency information which sometimes can reveal
a page consistently posting New Zealand content isn’t even
run from New Zealand. Many of these “engagement bait” sites
are simply trying to boost page views and potential ad
revenue.

All election advertising by candidates,
parties and third-party promoters must include a promoter
statement, the Electoral Commission says. That’s those small
notes you should see on billboards, web and newspaper
adverts telling you it was “authorised by John Smith” or
something similar.

“If it’s a statement by a candidate
or party, check that it’s from their real social media
account, or their real website,” the commission writes on
its website.

If you see a viral post that looks like
an election advertisement but it doesn’t contain a
statement, that’s a clue there could be something dodgy
going on, and it also breaks election rules.

“I would
encourage us to continue to keep thinking critically about
what people tell us, even if them come from sources that we
admire or that we have a relationship with, or whether
that’s an Instagram account that we enjoy and follow or a
YouTube account that we enjoy and follow,” Isaacs
said.

“Let’s go check another news source. Not just,
you know, this one Instagram reel which I
received.”

AI has already become inescapable in other
countries like the US, Israel and Germany in recent
elections. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just
this week shared
AI-generated fake videos of Iran’s Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei as part of his
campaign.

But Lyons and Isaacs said – so far – AI
advertising hasn’t got quite so bad in New
Zealand.

“I’m sure we won’t see this in New Zealand by
New Zealand parties because we’ve got a responsible
democratic system and we’ve got parties that have to work
within rules,” Lyons said.

“In New Zealand, we’re
relatively lucky. … The well of the sources that we have
out there is not as poisoned and as misleading as it is in
some other places,” Isaacs said.

Still, content like
an
ad by the Taxpayers Union that featured an AI-generated
Chris Hipkins shown breaking into taxpayers’ houses and
stealing their money may be a sign of what’s to come in
future elections.

Third tip: Take a look at
your media diet

It’s easy for any of us to
get stuck in a rut, and the algorithms
that power social media tend to serve up content that
follows what they’ve already tracked us viewing, creating
what Isaacs called “algorithmic enclaves”.

“Some
people are being fed more and more of this type of
information and we’re not actually coming together in order
to talk about them, you know, as a community,” she
said.

“The way in which algorithms work is, by many of
these platforms, is a sort of deliberately dark art,” Lyons
said.

Everyone has their own political biases which
the algorithms are happy to cater to.

If you are
constantly seeing content with one particular political
slant or supporting one agenda, it’s worth considering why
that is, Lyons said.

“We’ve got to start thinking,
hang on a second, is this all of the media? Is this what
everyone is seeing?”

Big tech companies have cut
down on factchecking despite growing concerns about
their role in spreading misinformation.

“We need the
tech companies to do their jobs as well,” Isaacs
said.

It’s good to include many different sources in
your news diet, Lyons said.

“Yeah, five a day to
borrow from the vegetables, perhaps. Maybe that’s what we
should be looking at.”

How can I report
something dodgy?

Some misleading election
advertising can be reported to various
organisations.

The Electoral Commission deals with
breaching of election advertising or Election Day rules
under the Electoral Act, and election programmes under the
Broadcasting Act. Offences could then be reported to the
police.

When it comes to content, the Broadcasting
Standards Authority, the Media Council and Advertising
Standards Authority can all field possible complaints about
election adverts that fall in their jurisdiction.

The
BSA currently oversees TV and radio, the ASA oversees ads in
other media, and the Media Council looks at editorial
content concerns.

But when it comes to social media,
sometimes tracking down who’s actually responsible for viral
content can be slippery.

Ultimately, the burden is on
all of us to carefully consider whether or not what we’re
seeing and sharing online is legitimate.

“It’s just
making sure that we are conscious of what it is that we’re
doing and seeing, and if we feel that things are being off
balance, try and do what we can to redress some of that,”
Lyons said.

“It has to be part of our responsibilities
being online citizens to make sure we are sure of what it is
that we are passing on – before we pass it
on.”

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