Lanna Hill: Beating disinformation fatigue crucial for our society as we face major elections

As we face the biggest election year in history, with an estimated two to four billion people heading to the polls across the globe, including the major elections in the US and Australia and just recently in the UK, it’s arguably one of the most critical times in living memory when we think about being able to access accurate and reliable information.

Alongside this, we’re also living in a time where more and more of us are accessing our news and information via social media, with 20 per cent of Australians now choosing social media over other news sources. This is only beaten by free-to-air TV and online news sources, at 26 per cent and 23 per cent respectively. Our youngest voting generation, Gen Z, accesses a whopping 49 per cent of their news from social media sources, which presents a fairly significant problem when we factor in the battle between the Australian Government and Meta over the News Media Bargaining Code.

Among all these factors is the significant impact our social media algorithms have on the content we consume. They are built to feed us the content we find appealing and engaging, all to keep us on the algorithm longer and more frequently – be it reliable and accurate or not.

Known as the echo chamber effect, our personalised algorithms and feeds create feedback loops that reinforce our own confirmation bias and present very real challenges in increasing misinformation and disinformation, as users are far more likely to share content that aligns with their own views, regardless of the accuracy or credibility of the source. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen memes or reels shared on Instagram, Facebook, or even LinkedIn where the source of the information isn’t cited and is often quite transparently fiction presented as fact. How many of us go out of our way to curate our newsfeeds and social media followings to include a balance of views and sources, those we agree with and those we don’t?

One of the factors at play here is the collective fatigue many of us feel, as huge world events continue to keep coming, and large social, cultural and economic issues are screaming out to be addressed. We all know there are significant problems in the world at the moment, and big shifts in attitudes and behaviour need to take place in societies across the globe for change to occur. There has arguably never been a more critical time for people of all ages to be challenging their beliefs and opinions, having uncomfortable conversations and doing so from an educated, informed space — but we’re tired, and understandably so. Australians are battling a myriad of issues impacting their everyday lives. So we scroll our social media feeds at night, and seek comfort in the familiar — in the things that make us feel better about the world we’re living in.

As we stare down the barrel of another huge year for Australians in the lead-up to the Federal election, I can only hope that we can dig deep as a country to seek alternative views and make decisions based from an informed and compassionate place. Let’s have those discussions in our offices and dinner tables and value the role that balanced journalism plays in this country as we battle the allure of our mobile phones and social media feeds.

Lanna Hill is a strategist, speaker and founder of Leverage Media.