Mission to Mitigate - Ready To Complete!

Misinformation and Disinformation are real. Real issues which affect too many people. From influencing political results, different opinions, producing fake facts and undermining prominent issues, we decided that we had to take stance and reach out to as many people as possible to create awareness.

Over the past four weeks we have looked at what exactly misinformation and disinformation is and what it does, examples of how it has been used, ways we can tackle it together and why we must do something about it along with what is being done at state level to tackle misinformation and disinformation. At the beginning of this project we came together to create a main goal: produce social media platforms filled with fun, creative and informative posts that will encourage people to be active and take a stance against misinformation and disinformation in order to promote importance of being able to gain information through social media without the worry that the information is false. We truly recognise the rising importance of social media for keeping up with the news, for seeing different opinions and for knowledge gain. Social media is the new media.

Using Brexit, the Covid-19 Pandemic and climate change as examples to highlight how misinformation and disinformation have been used and what the effects of their usage has been was a well thought out decision. Each of these examples have had some sort of significance and were/are challenging. Brexit introduced independence to the UK after 47 years of being a part of the European Union. A decision like this was a huge ask for the people of Britain and required the public to have knowledge for both sides of the argument. Misinformed posts undermined the true reality of what Britain would face when independent of the EU and this led to a result that proved different and more challenging than what was said during the campaign. Covid-19 and life following on from the pandemic saw misinformed and disinformed posts create myths and theories about how it started and why it was started indicating that it was a possibility for control. These posts created a negative environment surrounding health and whether or not the solutions on offer were actually helpful or damaging. Climate change and what we know about it to inflict change is also undermined by false information. Whether people believe it is a real issue or how harmful to the environment these emissions are is questioned due to what has been posted.

Now more than ever we need a collaborative solution. Online platforms and tech companies need to work with our government fully to create and enforce a successful strategy to tackle mis and disinformation. As we currently await the outcome of the Online Safety Bill, it is important that we ourselves also take action when using social media by reporting accounts and specific posts that we suspect to be initiating false information either intentionally or unintentionally as both are equally as harmful - just one is more of an evil than the other. We also need to use the tips provided for when actually reading informative posts online. We are also hopeful that powerful organisations such as the World Health Organisation continue to do their bit in the fight against mis and disinformation as their influence and expertise is essential in the fight.

All information to help you help us can be found on this blog, please share posts with other to encourage more awareness. For now we leave you with a stream of knowledge on misinformation and disinformation for you to use to your advantage to get the most out of social media as it really is a generally positive tool for now and in the future.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to use what you know and what you have learned from us to mitigate misinformation and disinformation. You are essential to completing this mission for the greater good!