Written evidence submitted by Dr Stephanie Alice Baker

Written Evidence:

Select Inquiry into Misinformation and Trusted Voices

Dr Stephanie Alice Baker

My name is Dr Stephanie Alice Baker. I am a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at City, University of London. My research examines how individuals and organisation acquire authority, influence and expertise, shaping what information is trusted and believed. My current research explores these issues in relation to social media influencers and the spread of misinformation online, particularly involving topics related to health, wellness and vaccines. I have published several books and articles on these themes including Lifestyle Gurus (2020), co-authored with Chris Rojek, Alt. Health Influencers (2022a) and Wellness Culture (2022b).

1)     Which organisations are the most trusted sources of information in the UK?

Numerous media reports, polls and surveys highlight the lack of public trust in social institutions and news organisations in Britain. The erosion of institutional trust extends beyond the UK. For example, the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, which surveyed over 36,000 respondents from 28 countries, revealed low levels of distrust ‘fuelled by a growing lack of faith in media and government’ (Edelman, 2022). My research with Matthew Wade and Michael James Walsh demonstrates that low institutional trust is a global issue which threatens the legitimacy of the news media, political, medical and scientific institutions (Walsh et al., forthcoming).

Following the global transmission of SARS‑CoV‑2, we conducted a questionnaire examining Public Trust in Experts during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Our questionnaire explored global attitudes during the initial phase of the pandemic in May 2020, a crucial period when reliable information was urgently required to influence behaviour and minimise individual and social harm. The questionnaire (n = 429) included a section on trusted sources of information. Respondents expressed an ambivalent attitude towards scientific and medical experts. We found that while the National Health Service (NHS) is revered in Britain, trust in politicians and government organisations–including those health organisations associated with the government–declined significantly during the pandemic following a series of trust eroding scandals involving government ministers breaking lockdown rules. Respondents indicated that this crisis of trust influenced their adherence to government guidelines and COVID-19 policies.

Our study also highlighted the limitations of using survey data to assess trust by asking respondents which sources they trust. For example, while numerous respondents distrusted the political and commercial motivations of vaccine manufacturers and what they considered to be the medical elite, many trusted these groups to safely administer medical care. These findings are important because they highlight that while the integrity of an individual or institution may be questioned, they can still be trusted to perform a specific task (see Botsman, 2017). Trust is specific to the context in which an action occurs and generic polls and surveys often fail to capture these nuances and contextual differences.

2)     Where do you see authoritative information to make up your mind about matters of national debate (such as vaccines and climate change)?

Matters of national debate are decided upon using a variety of authoritative sources (WHO, CDC, NHS), traditional media sources (newspapers, television, radio), online sources and face-to-face encounters. The ubiquity of digital devices and social media platforms has increased the relevance of online information, including traditional news sources, such as the BBC, which have a strong online presence. In our questionnaire we found that while 58% of those surveyed used social media as an information source during the pandemic, most relied on traditional media–print/online newspapers (73%) and television (66%)–to acquire information about COVID-19 (Walsh et al., forthcoming).

Social media is particularly effective at shaping behaviour change given the capacity for influencers to amplify content and target niche communities online (Baker, 2021). This is especially the case for those internet users disillusioned with the mainstream media, who seek out alternative sources online to provide credible information (Baker, 2022a). During the pandemic, many anti-vaccine influencers exploited people’s distrust of governments, public health organisations and the media to promote alternative health treatments and galvanise the anti-vaccine movement (Baker, 2022b; Baker and Walsh, 2022). The prevalence of misinformation in relation to COVID-19 points not only to the tensions between authoritative news sources and alternative media, but experience and expertise (for a more detailed analysis of these tensions see Baker, 2022b).

Offline interactions with friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances also shape decision-making and behaviour change regarding issues of national debate. Low institutional trust, therefore, is not synonymous with no trust. Instead, in a low trust society trust is redistributed to friends, family and those with whom we trust and identify with online (Baker and Rojek, 2019, 2020).

3)     Are you able to “do your own research” on matters of national debate?

One of the symptoms of our fraught relationship with authority and expertise in the twenty-first century has been the turn to the internet as a source of knowledge, information and social connection (Baker and Rojek, 2019, 2020). When social institutions and experts are no longer trusted, people turn to alternative sources for advice or take it upon themselves to “do their own research.”

Whereas scientific research involves critically analysing and evaluating a range of credible sources, the process of “doing your own research” often appears impervious to scientific evidence and indifferent to conventional expertise. Instead, “doing your own research” tends to confirm intuitions, desires and beliefs (what psychologists refer to as ‘desirability bias’ and ‘confirmation bias’). Rather than seeking sources that critically question one’s hypothesis or beliefs, internet users doing their own research tend to be algorithmically steered towards novel, outrageous and conspiratorial content in line with their pre-existing biases, giving legitimacy to misinformation and conspiracy theories circulating online.

4)     What role should the National Academies have in being a source of authoritative, trustworthy information?

National Academies play an important role in producing authoritative, trustworthy information. The issue National Academies face is two-fold: first, those distrustful of “the establishment” (politicians, experts, elites) are likely to be suspicious of information funded by the state and wealthy benefactors; second, is the issue of distribution. What we believe is predicated on who we believe. As a result, information shared by National Academies is likely to be rejected by those espousing populist sentiments.

5)     Are National Academies prominent enough voices in engaging with the variety of debates on the internet?

No. National Academies have influence online, however they mostly influence traditional news organisations and those seeking authoritative sources. There is a large section of society that does not engage with these channels and instead acquire their news and information from local, partisan news, social media and influencers online.

6)     Is the provision of authoritative information responsive enough to meet the challenge of misinformation that is spread on social media?

The provision of authoritative information is not sufficient to meet the challenge of misinformation on social media. Instead, it forms part of a broader strategy to inoculate the public from false and misleading information. This is because ‘misinformation is not simply an information problem; it is a relationship problem predicated on trust and identity’ (Baker, 2022b). The following example is a case in point.

At the start of the pandemic, the World Health Organisation warned of an ‘infodemic’ in which the volume of information internet users were exposed to online made it difficult to discern what information to trust and who to believe. The major tech companies responded to this threat by taking the unprecedented move to work together to implement strategies to combat misinformation about the virus. In a joint statement, Facebook, Reddit, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube pledged to enact two strategies as part of this initiative: the first involved updating their misinformation policies to limit the spread of harmful content on their sites; the second, aimed to promote accurate health information by elevating authoritative content from government healthcare agencies when users log on to social media or search for COVID-19 related terms on their platforms (see Baker et al., 2020). Although policies of this kind can help internet users access reliable, timely information online, they have limited impact in shaping the beliefs and behaviours of those already distrustful of the experts and elites believed to comprise the “establishment.”

In the questionnaire I conducted with Matthew Wade and Michael James Walsh in May 2020 we asked respondents whether they noticed and engaged with the authoritative content elevated on social media. We found that while the majority of those surveyed noticed authoritative content online, there remained significant issues in terms of internet users trusting this information given that it was produced by government healthcare agencies and public health authorities (see Walsh et al., forthcoming).

There are two important insights from this research. First, given many people’s distrust of the government and institutional politics, authoritative information needs to be produced and shared by non-political sources (Baker, 2020). Second, combatting misinformation requires more than ensuring that the public has sufficient access to authoritative information on matters of national debate. What is required is a more targeted approach in which authoritative information forms part of a broader strategy to reduce the spread of misinformation.

References

Baker, S. A. (2020). In Tackling Misinformation and Disinformation in the Context of

COVID-19. Cabinet Office C19 Seminar Series, 8 July.

Baker, S. A. (2021). Written evidence: Influencer culture (INF0004). UK Parliament. Available at: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/35315/pdf/

Baker, S. A. (2022a). Alt. Health Influencers: how wellness culture and web culture have been weaponised to promote conspiracy theories and far-right extremism during the COVID-19 pandemic. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 25(1), 3-24.

Baker, S. A. (2022b). Wellness Culture: how the wellness movement has been used to empower, profit and misinform. Emerald Group Publishing.

Baker, S. A., & Rojek, C. (2019). The Belle Gibson Scandal: The rise of lifestyle gurus as micro-celebrities in low-trust societies. Journal of Sociology, 56(3), 388-404.

Baker, S. A., & Rojek, C. (2020). Lifestyle Gurus: constructing authority and influence online. Polity.

Baker, S. A., Wade, M. & Walsh, M. J. (2020). The Challenges of Responding to

Misinformation During a Pandemic: content moderation and the limitations of the

concept of harm. Media International Australia, 177(1), 103-107.

Baker, S. A., & Walsh, M. J. (2022). ‘A mother’s intuition: it’s real and we have to believe in it’: how the maternal is used to promote vaccine refusal on Instagram. Information, Communication & Society, 1-18.

Botsman, R. (2017). Who can you Trust?: how technology brought us together–and why it could drive us apart. Penguin UK.

Edelman (2022). 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer: The Cycle of Distrust. Available at: https://www.edelman.com/trust/2022-trust-barometer

Walsh, M. J., Baker, S. A. & Wade, M. (forthcoming). Evaluating the elevation of authoritative health content online during the COVID-19 pandemic.