Disinformation is the deliberate creation of falsehood with the intent to deceive. Misinformation is the unwitting sharing of that false information. The two terms frequently get confused, but both are proliferating, and the impact on society is very real.
A report produced earlier this month by The Aspen Institute, a global non-profit organisation promoting humanistic causes, is emphatic about the damage being caused. “Hundreds of millions of people pay the price, every single day, for a world disordered by lies,” reads the introduction.
Right now, there’s a perfect storm of disinformation spilling out into the real world
Alex Mahadevan,
MediaWise
What is becoming clear is that disinformation isn’t going to stop, and online platforms are either unwilling or unable to suppress it. The responsibility, therefore, is thrown back on us, the audience: our role, we’re told, is to wise up and get better at discerning fact from fiction.
“Right now, there’s a perfect storm of disinformation spilling out into the real world,” says Alex Mahadevan at MediaWise, a US project promoting digital literacy. “The Covid pandemic [has highlighted] the life-and-death consequences, and since 2016 we have seen what online misinformation can do to democracies around the world. The US [presidential election] was a cakewalk compared to what we have seen in countries like the Philippines and Brazil.”
In recent days, one of the world’s most powerful companies and the world’s most powerful nation have both launched programmes to try and tackle the misinformation crisis. Google News Initiative is teaming up with student, journalism and literacy organisations to create educational material.
That material, in English and Spanish, will teach not only how to spot falsehood, but also how to talk to family and friends about digital literacy.
Meanwhile, the US government, warning of misinformation’s ability to “undermine public confidence in our institutions”, has created educational resources and even a series of graphic novels to convey the risk to society from endemic falsehood. “We’re now seeing a lot of these kind of initiatives,” says James Pamment from the Department of Strategic Communication at Lund University in Sweden. “What you're seeing with stuff like coronavirus and vaccines is that they're almost being weaponised. You need populations who are resilient to information attacks.”
The primary focus, understandably, is on young people. Having embedded media literacy in the curriculum in 2014, the Finnish government is now reaping the rewards, with its nation ranked highest in a European index of resistance to misinformation.
“If we can reach teenagers before they get to voting age, and teach them how to think critically, then we don't have to rely so much on trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube,” says Mahadevan. That unenviable latter task is generally undertaken by fact-checking organisations such as Snopes in the US and Fatabyyano in Jordan, but according to Mahadevan, many are too overwhelmed and understaffed to make the necessary impact.
You can trace back a lot of the problems with disinformation to the rise of digital advertising
Alex Mahadevan
While the US government is using graphic novels to reach out to young people, research has also been done at the Centre for Cybersecurity at New York University Abu Dhabi into the use of games. Fakey, a game which asks players to rate pieces of online news for accuracy, was found to be “effective in priming players to be suspicious of articles from questionable sources”. But while players became better at recognising partisan language and excessively emotional headlines, the design of the social media platform itself can be unhelpful, according to one of the researchers, Nicholas Micallef.
“If social metrics indicate that an article has high levels of engagement, people are more likely to like or share it, and they become more vulnerable to the influence of misinformation,” he says. In other words, if a lot of people share it, we can end up believing it.
There’s little incentive for profit-driven social media companies to tackle the problem, according to Mahadevan. “You can trace back a lot of the problems with disinformation to the rise of digital advertising,” he says. “The business model is eyeballs and engagement. The way to achieve that is content that can start fires and spread quickly.”
Pamment agrees. “Recently [social media platforms] have been telling us about the great work they've been doing, but it's clear that is not working. Misinformation is getting into everyone's feeds, and everybody knows someone who won't take the vaccine [because of it].”
Education is clearly the solution. But what if people don’t want to be taught? What if people susceptible to believing disinformation consider themselves to be critically appraising it, and think that the education itself is a kind of disinformation to be resisted? “In most democracies you have the right to be wrong,” says Pamment. “It’s not illegal to say things that are stupid. But if the result of that is real-world harms, then governments have to step in.”
With many countries slow to launch such initiatives, the Aspen report calls upon philanthropists to step in and offer funds to support media literacy. Mahadevan’s organisation, MediaWise, has enlisted the help of influencers and celebrities to get the message across. “We recently partnered with an Instagram influencer, Cydnee Black. She has an audience we could never reach, who never even think about fact-checking. Even if they're exposed to one or two videos, there is evidence that this can alter the way they behave online.”
The problem won’t be solved in the short term simply by flinging resources at it, however. For example, the Finnish model of embedding digital literacy in the curriculum isn’t guaranteed to work, according to Pamment. “The Finns historically have very strong trust in government,” he says. “I don't think we should assume that the path to societal resilience against disinformation will be the same everywhere. This is a generational issue, and a very long-term project. We have to start with kids, teach them from a very young age, keep that going, and hopefully have a society that's worth having trust in.”
MATCH INFO
Jersey 147 (20 overs)
UAE 112 (19.2 overs)
Jersey win by 35 runs
Company profile
Date started: December 24, 2018
Founders: Omer Gurel, chief executive and co-founder and Edebali Sener, co-founder and chief technology officer
Based: Dubai Media City
Number of employees: 42 (34 in Dubai and a tech team of eight in Ankara, Turkey)
Sector: ConsumerTech and FinTech
Cashflow: Almost $1 million a year
Funding: Series A funding of $2.5m with Series B plans for May 2020
Asia Cup 2018 final
Who: India v Bangladesh
When: Friday, 3.30pm, Dubai International Stadium
Watch: Live on OSN Cricket HD
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Scoreline
UAE 2-1 Saudi Arabia
UAE Mabkhout 21’, Khalil 59’
Saudi Al Abed (pen) 20’
Man of the match Ahmed Khalil (UAE)
The major Hashd factions linked to Iran:
Badr Organisation: Seen as the most militarily capable faction in the Hashd. Iraqi Shiite exiles opposed to Saddam Hussein set up the group in Tehran in the early 1980s as the Badr Corps under the supervision of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The militia exalts Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei but intermittently cooperated with the US military.
Saraya Al Salam (Peace Brigade): Comprised of former members of the officially defunct Mahdi Army, a militia that was commanded by Iraqi cleric Moqtada Al Sadr and fought US and Iraqi government and other forces between 2004 and 2008. As part of a political overhaul aimed as casting Mr Al Sadr as a more nationalist and less sectarian figure, the cleric formed Saraya Al Salam in 2014. The group’s relations with Iran has been volatile.
Kataeb Hezbollah: The group, which is fighting on behalf of the Bashar Al Assad government in Syria, traces its origins to attacks on US forces in Iraq in 2004 and adopts a tough stance against Washington, calling the United States “the enemy of humanity”.
Asaeb Ahl Al Haq: An offshoot of the Mahdi Army active in Syria. Asaeb Ahl Al Haq’s leader Qais al Khazali was a student of Mr Al Moqtada’s late father Mohammed Sadeq Al Sadr, a prominent Shiite cleric who was killed during Saddam Hussein’s rule.
Harakat Hezbollah Al Nujaba: Formed in 2013 to fight alongside Mr Al Assad’s loyalists in Syria before joining the Hashd. The group is seen as among the most ideological and sectarian-driven Hashd militias in Syria and is the major recruiter of foreign fighters to Syria.
Saraya Al Khorasani: The ICRG formed Saraya Al Khorasani in the mid-1990s and the group is seen as the most ideologically attached to Iran among Tehran’s satellites in Iraq.
(Source: The Wilson Centre, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation)
Muslim Council of Elders condemns terrorism on religious sites
The Muslim Council of Elders has strongly condemned the criminal attacks on religious sites in Britain.
It firmly rejected “acts of terrorism, which constitute a flagrant violation of the sanctity of houses of worship”.
“Attacking places of worship is a form of terrorism and extremism that threatens peace and stability within societies,” it said.
The council also warned against the rise of hate speech, racism, extremism and Islamophobia. It urged the international community to join efforts to promote tolerance and peaceful coexistence.
Key findings of Jenkins report
- Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna, "accepted the political utility of violence"
- Views of key Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, have “consistently been understood” as permitting “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” and “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
- Muslim Brotherhood at all levels has repeatedly defended Hamas attacks against Israel, including the use of suicide bombers and the killing of civilians.
- Laying out the report in the House of Commons, David Cameron told MPs: "The main findings of the review support the conclusion that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism."
How has net migration to UK changed?
The figure was broadly flat immediately before the Covid-19 pandemic, standing at 216,000 in the year to June 2018 and 224,000 in the year to June 2019.
It then dropped to an estimated 111,000 in the year to June 2020 when restrictions introduced during the pandemic limited travel and movement.
The total rose to 254,000 in the year to June 2021, followed by steep jumps to 634,000 in the year to June 2022 and 906,000 in the year to June 2023.
The latest available figure of 728,000 for the 12 months to June 2024 suggests levels are starting to decrease.
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It Was Just an Accident
Director: Jafar Panahi
Stars: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr
Rating: 4/5
MO
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England v West Indies
England squad for the first Test Cook, Stoneman, Westley, Root (captain), Malan, Stokes, Bairstow, Moeen, Roland-Jones, Broad, Anderson, Woakes, Crane
Fixtures
1st Test Aug 17-21, Edgbaston
2nd Test Aug 25-29, Headingley
3rd Test Sep 7-11, Lord's
How green is the expo nursery?
Some 400,000 shrubs and 13,000 trees in the on-site nursery
An additional 450,000 shrubs and 4,000 trees to be delivered in the months leading up to the expo
Ghaf, date palm, acacia arabica, acacia tortilis, vitex or sage, techoma and the salvadora are just some heat tolerant native plants in the nursery
Approximately 340 species of shrubs and trees selected for diverse landscape
The nursery team works exclusively with organic fertilisers and pesticides
All shrubs and trees supplied by Dubai Municipality
Most sourced from farms, nurseries across the country
Plants and trees are re-potted when they arrive at nursery to give them room to grow
Some mature trees are in open areas or planted within the expo site
Green waste is recycled as compost
Treated sewage effluent supplied by Dubai Municipality is used to meet the majority of the nursery’s irrigation needs
Construction workforce peaked at 40,000 workers
About 65,000 people have signed up to volunteer
Main themes of expo is ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’ and three subthemes of opportunity, mobility and sustainability.
Expo 2020 Dubai to open in October 2020 and run for six months
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cylinder turbo hybrid
Transmission: eight-speed automatic
Power: 390bhp
Torque: 400Nm
Price: Dh340,000 ($92,579
The%20specs
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SHAITTAN
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Company name: Farmin
Date started: March 2019
Founder: Dr Ali Al Hammadi
Based: Abu Dhabi
Sector: AgriTech
Initial investment: None to date
Partners/Incubators: UAE Space Agency/Krypto Labs
Game Changer
Director: Shankar
Stars: Ram Charan, Kiara Advani, Anjali, S J Suryah, Jayaram
Rating: 2/5
The%20specs
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Dubai World Cup Carnival card:
6.30pm: Handicap (Turf) | US$175,000 | 2,410 metres
7.05pm: UAE 1000 Guineas Trial Conditions (Dirt) | $100,000 | 1,400m
7.40pm: Handicap (T) | $145,000 | 1,000m
8.15pm: Dubawi Stakes Group 3 (D) | $200,000 | 1,200m
8.50pm: Singspiel Stakes Group 3 (T) | $200,000 | 1,800m
9.25pm: Handicap (T) | $175,000 | 1,400m
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Specs
Engine: 3.0L twin-turbo V6
Gearbox: 10-speed automatic
Power: 405hp at 5,500rpm
Torque: 562Nm at 3,000rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 11.2L/100km
Price: From Dh292,845 (Reserve); from Dh320,145 (Presidential)
On sale: Now
Tamkeen's offering
- Option 1: 70% in year 1, 50% in year 2, 30% in year 3
- Option 2: 50% across three years
- Option 3: 30% across five years
Titanium Escrow profile
Started: December 2016
Founder: Ibrahim Kamalmaz
Based: UAE
Sector: Finance / legal
Size: 3 employees, pre-revenue
Stage: Early stage
Investors: Founder's friends and Family
No%20Windmills%20in%20Basra
%3Cp%3EAuthor%3A%20Diaa%20Jubaili%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EPages%3A%20180%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EPublisher%3A%20Deep%20Vellum%20Publishing%C2%A0%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
$1,000 award for 1,000 days on madrasa portal
Daily cash awards of $1,000 dollars will sweeten the Madrasa e-learning project by tempting more pupils to an education portal to deepen their understanding of math and sciences.
School children are required to watch an educational video each day and answer a question related to it. They then enter into a raffle draw for the $1,000 prize.
“We are targeting everyone who wants to learn. This will be $1,000 for 1,000 days so there will be a winner every day for 1,000 days,” said Sara Al Nuaimi, project manager of the Madrasa e-learning platform that was launched on Tuesday by the Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, to reach Arab pupils from kindergarten to grade 12 with educational videos.
“The objective of the Madrasa is to become the number one reference for all Arab students in the world. The 5,000 videos we have online is just the beginning, we have big ambitions. Today in the Arab world there are 50 million students. We want to reach everyone who is willing to learn.”
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
At Eternity’s Gate
Director: Julian Schnabel
Starring: Willem Dafoe, Oscar Isaacs, Mads Mikkelsen
Three stars
Who are the Soroptimists?
The first Soroptimists club was founded in Oakland, California in 1921. The name comes from the Latin word soror which means sister, combined with optima, meaning the best.
The organisation said its name is best interpreted as ‘the best for women’.
Since then the group has grown exponentially around the world and is officially affiliated with the United Nations. The organisation also counts Queen Mathilde of Belgium among its ranks.
