Covid-19, ‘fake news’ and the future of platform regulation

From ‘Lügenpresse’ to ‘fake news’

The term ‘fake news’ is notoriously vague and highly politicised. On the one hand, it has been used to describe foreign interference in elections and referendums, sparking fears over the threat posed to democracy. On the other hand, it has been employed by the US President but also by nationalist, far-right parties such as the German party Alternative for Germany (AfD) for political advantage. The Trump administration and nationalist parties who lambast the mainstream media in their tweets, election campaigns and demonstrations join a long tradition of press victimisation.

In the First World War, the notion of ‘Lügenpresse’ was enlisted in the effort to discredit reporting by the enemy. Before the NS party’s seizure of power, this concept was weaponised against the ‘unpatriotic’ press of the Weimar Republic, which failed to stand up to the demeaning Versailles Treaty; later it was used against foreign media, not least by the chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. It is against this backdrop of historic and recent abuse of the term ‘fake news’ for political ends that the DCMS recommended that the term ‘fake news’ be rejected, and that an agreed definition of the terms ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ be put forward. In response to this recommendation, the Government distinguished between disinformation as the ‘deliberate creation and sharing of false and/or manipulated information that is intended to deceive and mislead audiences, either for the purposes of causing harm, or for political, personal or financial gain’ and misinformation as the ‘inadvertent sharing of false information’.

The distinction between these two types of information challenges draws on Wardle and Derakshan’s typology of ‘information disorder’. It attempts to separate inaccurate content on the basis of the disseminating agent’s motivation. Indeed, intent to deceive is key when attempting to draw a line between calculated falsehoods and legitimate forms of political expression such as ‘news satire’, which ordinarily aim to mock, not to deceive. This distinction is pertinent in so far as the methods used to tackle different forms of untruthful expression may need to vary depending on the motivation of the actors involved.

Media literacy is a long term solution for misinformation, while blocking financial incentives is a possible remedy against the spread of disinformation. However, both disinformation and misinformation can potentially pose similar risks. In the context of the current pandemic, a report by the European External Action Service concluded that misinformation was ‘the more pressing challenge’ for public health. While the terms of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ are less politically loaded and more amenable to a definition than the term ‘fake news’, one needs to pay heed to the fact that the term ‘fake news’ is likely here to stay as ‘part of the vernacular that helps people express their frustration with the media environment’. The problem of ‘fake news’ rose to renewed prominence in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.