It is difficult to combat fake news - with the approach of 2022 US midterm elections, there is a wave of false claims surrounding the vote. The crucial factor is the level of trust that the population has in authorities and the media.
Finland
Shortly after Vladimir Putin called up 300,000 military reservists in Sep. 2022, a video showing long queues of cars at the Finnish-Russian border started circulating on social media. This was quickly pointed out as fake by the Finnish Border Guard, who posted on Twitter that some of the videos were fake, having been filmed earlier. The tweet then made it to the top of the Ukraine live page on the website of national broadcaster Yle.
Finland is a high trust society, with the government trusted by 71% of the Finnish population. Parliament, the civil service, the police and the media all enjoy high levels of trust. The Open Society Institute annual study revealed that Finland ranks highest in a global chart measuring resilience to disinformation, while the UK ranks 8th and the US 10th. While Finns don't believe everything they read in the papers, and do look at social media for information, more of them are able to critically evaluate information.
As US midterm elections approach, fake news causes real-world consequence. Despite the increased focus (including efforts by the tech giants) on tackling false and misleading claims on social media, disinformation still gets through and people with social media accounts are still being pointed towards information that bolsters their starting viewpoints.
The Finnish solution
The Finnish school curriculum was revised in 2016 to teach children the skills they need to spot the fabricated information spread by social media. This is not taught as a separate subject but embedded into other subjects. Maths classes look at how statistics can be manipulated. An art project might be for children to create their own versions of a shampoo advertisement, that show that hair might not end up as shiny as promised on the bottle. In language classes they compare the same story written as fact-based text and as propaganda, while history lessons might compare war-time posters from Nazi Germany and the United States.
Finland's National Emergency Supply Agency
This is a comprehensive publicly-funded security model. The government works with private businesses and the media to build public resilience to threats and prepare people for all types of disruptions. Finland also has a number of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and voluntary organisations working to combat fake news. The best known is probably fact-checking service Faktabaari.
Finland's experience is that proactive moderation in real-time can make a difference.
What can social media platforms do?
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, social media sites have all committed to doing more to fight against falsehoods. There has been some success in removing harmful content and labelling conspiracies with accurate information from independent fact-checkers.
But there are still posts that rack up likes and views before they are removed, and many that aren't identified. Some experts favour a pro-active moderation approach to tackle these posts before they spread. However, its harder to restore faith in institutions, especially when trust in them has been eroded by disinformation.
Source: BBC news item How Finland can help US fight fake news 13th October 2022
