Reflecting on five weeks researching disinformation in food and agriculture

This post is part of an on-going deep dive into viral disinformation in food and agriculture. For more check out our blog.

In 2021 we assembled a report alongside AgriFutures Australia and The Institute for the Future capturing the five forces that will shape the agri-food system in the coming decade.

One of those forces was viral disinformation. Over the last five weeks we have been diving deep into this issue — how to define it, how it works, how it will impact farmers, corporates and consumers in the coming years, and how to respond.

After a few weeks diving into the content, it is a good time to pause and reflect on the essential ideas that have been picked out so far:

The Basics — What is Viral Disinformation

Viral disinformation is dishonest information that is intended to manipulate people and designed to circulate widely and rapidly. The intention is important — misinformation could be an honest mistake; disinformation intends to manipulate.

While the concept isn’t new, viral disinformation today is democratic and decentralized. Easy-to-use social media platforms and technology enables virtually anyone to rapidly create and disseminate false information intended to manipulate audiences.

DaaS is Here

Disinformation-as-a-Service (DaaS) is exactly what it sounds like — private firms coordinating the spread of disinformation for clients. DaaS providers offer a range of services — fake news articles, dubious websites, and social media accounts created en masse to engage with their own disinformation. Crucially, DaaS providers offer their customers deniability.

While DaaS providers operate on behalf of specific clients, the implications are often well beyond this limited scope. These activities erode trust and sow social discord, which can end up impacting industries and businesses in unpredictable ways.

How to Respond?

Now that we know anyone could be affected by disinformation generally, let alone a targeted campaign, how best to respond? With more disinformation entering into the global pool of information, we found one key insight from research conducted by Harvard Kennedy School.

Small increases in the acceptance of reliable information in society is more effective than large decreases in disinformation.

We observed this in the example of Australian Eggs, who recently revealed community trust and acceptance of the egg industry by Australians has increased significantly since 2018. This has been due to proactive response to consumer concerns, sharing more authentic and honest industry stories, and investing in new ways to communicate that resonate with consumers.

It’s a social project

Finland is currently working out whether government-funded initiatives can be used to teach residents, students, journalists and politicians how to counter disinformation. Public initiatives educate the public about verifying information, understanding techniques used to manipulate information online, and how to identify bots.

As the country with the highest degree of public trust in the media, the citizens of Finland are less likely to turn to unreliable sources for information. In this very modern dilemma, these experiments are worth learning more about to understand how to combat disinformation.

This is just the beginning

There is so much still to unpack on viral disinformation. So far, we’ve identified the fundamentals that we need to be across to be able to act effectively in food and agriculture.

These include:

• knowing who’s behind disinformation campaigns and what’s motivating them;
• understanding the tools and tactics used and how to identify these;
• identifying the risk factors or target audiences for campaigns; and
• knowing the different strategies to use to respond to attacks and prevent them.

We’ve only just scraped the surface on all these topics, and we’ll continue to dive into this more over the coming weeks, so stay tuned!