Written evidence submitted by the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge

Written evidence for the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Sub-committee on Online Harms and Disinformation

Inquiry: Misinformation and trusted voices

22 September 2022

The Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy is an academic research centre at the University of Cambridge, with world-leading expertise in the regulation and governance of emerging technologies. We submit the following evidence.

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

Society is changing, and our evolving digital landscape is influencing how people understand scientific information. With the rise of misinformation seen across the online world, we need adequate protections that allow scientists to continue to research and communicate the challenges and solutions to the most pressing issues of our age. Alongside other institutions, including universities, National Academies have a role to play, partly by being a home to scientists and one source of authoritative, trustworthy evidence-based information.

Institutions, including universities and National Academies provide a framework of scrutiny, peer-review and processing of evidence that ensures quality of research and expertise in subject matters that are of most importance to society. A recent report from the Royal Society on the online information environment has demonstrated the important role that such institutions play in ensuring the production, maintenance and communication of good quality scientific information.[1]

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

With a plethora of information available online in equitable ways, we need to ensure that there are ways to parse quality, trustworthy information. The role of institutions can be one such hallmark for quality and trustworthiness. However, these institutions cannot be effective alone in tackling the problem of misinformation.

Effectiveness of misinformation. There is still significant scientific debate and conflicting evidence about the effectiveness and impact of online misinformation on people’s behaviours and decisions (See among many sources a report from the Royal Society[2]).

Systems change. Providing access to trustworthy and authoritative information is not enough to tackle the spread of such content across social media. Until the social and economic incentivises for misinformation are tackled, then the problem is unlikely to be addressed.[3] Our research focuses on how to build digital ecosystems that allow democracy to flourish. This includes better governance around the decisions and behaviour of information platforms and propagators.[4]

Engaging diverse publics. Scientists and researchers need to ensure that we communicate effectively with diverse publics. Understanding who and how best to communicate effectively with different audiences will be crucial to developing sufficient access to high quality information in matters of national debate.

For example, a recent report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has demonstrated how people with minimal trust in news sources encountered online news and sought to assess the credibility of online information relied ‘on cues for making quick, in-the-moment judgements, including from friends and family, trusted news sources, graphics’.[5] The Royal Society itself has called for a more nuanced and focussed approach to tackling misinformation, recommending that governments, for example that content removal cannot be the solution to online scientific misinformation.[6]

Understanding the specificities of the misinformation environment on particular topics, for example the climate crisis or vaccines, is therefore crucial to developing public voices that people trust, including those of scientists and researchers. This trust helps combat the spread of misinformation.