Is it true? How media literacy provides the tools to defuse disinformation and misinformation

 Two days before New Hampshire’s 2024 presidential primary, thousands of voters received a startling phone call – one apparently placed by President Joe Biden. The president’s message? Don’t vote in the Democratic primary or risk being barred from voting in November’s general election.

The phone call, however, was a fake, one commissioned by a political consultant who paid an out-of-state magician $150 to imitate, with the help of artificial intelligence, Biden’s voice while recording the message. The consultant said he perpetrated the fake call to point out the dangers of misinformation and the potential harmful uses of AI. Setting aside the consultant’s judgment in creating a real-world deepfake, the case does highlight how easily and cheaply misinformation and disinformation can be disseminated using both old technology and new.

The spread of misinformation is not new, of course. We all have heard rumors passed from person to person that turned out not to be true, and even read or watched news reports from reputable journalistic organizations that proved to be inaccurate. Even disinformation – defined as the deliberate spread of false information – has been used for millennia to confuse and deceive targeted audiences. Warring factions in ancient Rome, for example, waged a disinformation campaign after the assassination of Julius Caesar.

Yet, misinformation and disinformation now pose an unprecedented threat to democracy and to citizens’ trust in essential institutions because of digital software, social media platforms and rapidly evolving AI tools that enable the rapid, widespread dissemination of false information. How should governments, universities, K-12 schools, media organizations, business and nonprofit sectors, and individual citizens respond to this growing threat? Media literacy – education-based efforts to “immunize” citizens against misinformation and disinformation offers the most effective approach to safeguarding our democracy against the bad actors who want to confuse and disorient the public.

In the following case studies, we will analyze four approaches to media literacy education and training, each important to reach different segments of our society.