The Big Threat of mis and disinformation

The Big Threat of mis and disinformation

We’ve got a new series over on the News Club channel called The Big Threat… It’s based on the experiences of our very own Bryce Corbett, who runs the Squiz Kids channel. He was awarded a Churchill fellowship, and he’s been travelling the world to see how media literacy is being taught in other countries to protect citizens from mis and disinformation and fake news. So in this Squiz Shortcut, we’re talking to Bryce about:

• what he’s learned,

• the importance of teaching kids media literacy skills,

• and why mis and disinformation is the ‘big threat’ of our times…

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Listen time: 17 minutes

Squiz the Shortcut

Bryce, take us back to the start… How did the idea for The Big Threat come about?
It really comes from 2 of the major roles in my life - as a journalist, and as a dad. I noticed my 2 kids’ media consumption habits were markedly different from my own - they weren’t getting their news and information from the same places I was at their age. Anything they knew about the world, they were learning from social media. It’s why we created Newshounds - a free media literacy resource for primary school classrooms that teaches kids how to spot misinformation and learn to filter online fact from fiction in the flood of online content which they’re exposed to on a daily basis. 

And Newshounds has more than 4,500 primary school teachers around the country signed up to do the program with their students…
Yep, which we think shows that there’s a concern among parents and teachers alike that the education system hasn’t kept pace with the speed of technological development and accompanying change in media consumption habits among our kids. 

So that mission eventually led you to the Winston Churchill Trust - tell us about that…
So every year the Trust awards Churchill Fellowships. They’re given to Australians from all walks of life, in all endeavours, who are deemed to be doing something to better the Australian community generally, and I was lucky enough to have received one. The idea of the Fellowship is that you use funds provided by the Trust to travel overseas, meet other people working in your field, and bring back whatever expertise you glean to further the project you’re working on. 

And that brings us to The Big Threat…
That’s right… The meetings I had and interviews I conducted have formed the basis of The Big Threat. The podcast series dropped yesterday on the News Club channel, and the project was interesting for lots of reasons, but the overwhelming impression I came away with was that the information wars are the new frontier when it comes to geo-politics.

Can you explain that a bit more… 
Propaganda is a tool that states have been using against one another for as long as there have been conflicts in the world. But today, it has a new name and a new level of sophistication in the form of mis and disinformation. And what I’ve learned is that many countries are increasingly assuming a war footing when it comes to fighting mis and disinformation. Whether through political developments in their homeland or acts of terror, they’ve realised that having a population that has been inoculated, if you like, against fake news means people are less likely to fall victim to it, and that guarding against it has become a 21st century necessity.

And your travels were timely…
Exactly… I was in the US at the start of the year and I remember waking up in San Francisco, about to head off to Stanford University for my first interview, when Meta announced it was discontinuing fact checking on its platforms Facebook and Instagram. That announcement came only days after CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been to visit President Donald Trump in his Mar-a-Lago estate. And then days later, when I was in New York and the Presidential inauguration was taking place, there sitting behind the new President, in seats that would normally have been taken up by his Cabinet ministers were the CEOs of the world’s biggest tech companies … 

Spell out what that means… 
So here was a President who had made the term ‘fake news’ popular - who had arguably surfed a misinformation wave into power - being feted by the CEOs of companies like Google, Meta and Amazon - who between them control the social media platforms from which so many Americans, and increasingly Australians, get their ‘news’ and derive their sense of what is happening in the world and why from. 

So the onus is on us to navigate that world if big tech has largely decided it isn’t in their interest…?
Yep, and that’s where education comes in… We spend lots of time learning to swim/learning the road rules as kids - but not so much learning how to navigate the internet. And what I learned in the US is that many media institutions have taken it on themselves to teach people the basics of media literacy. 

How are they doing that?
Public radio in the United States is mounting a crusade for it, there are lots of organisations teaching kids how to spot fake news when they’re online - and of course, the importance of a media literate population has only heightened in the United States since the re-election of Trump... 

Why is that?
All of the people I met, all of the media literacy advocates and government officials and journalists I interviewed were watching with a rising sense of trepidation the moves the new administration was making to control/influence even mainstream media - which we’re seeing playing out with the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show by CBS as it seeks presidential favour for a corporate merger. 

You’ve mentioned the US, a country that tends to dominate global headlines, but your travels took you much further… You visited Estonia and France in Europe as well. Why those two?
Because both countries are recognised as the most advanced when it comes to having and valuing a media literate population. So, starting with Estonia, what I found there is a country which is on a war footing. Media literacy is a cradle-to-grave priority, where a shared border with Russia and its famed disinformation troll factories (groups hired to send out messages on a large scale designed to manipulate public opinion on social media and in the comments of major media sites) have seen the rise of universal media literacy programs overseen by every government department including the Ministry of Defence. These are countries for whom - as I say in the podcast - having a media literate population is not just a nice to have, it’s existential.

In France, you met the journalists and government officials training teachers to teach media literacy to all French highschoolers, as per a government mandate introduced after the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks of 2015 … 
Yes… And just to refresh your memory, those attacks saw 12 people shot and killed in Paris when Islamic militants attacked the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after it published a caricature ridiculing the prophet Mohammed. It sparked a nationwide movement to protect free speech and fight back against the sort of mis and disinformation that had flourished before and after the attacks. And some of the people I met in France and interviewed speak frankly about how fragile the social fabric in Western democracies is, and how important these information wars are to the future of Western democracy in general.

And that’s the motif you heard repeated in the interviews you did with some of the leading lights here in Australia on the importance of civics education and digital literacy, isn’t it?
That’s right. In the final episode of The Big Threat I speak to people like the Governor General, Sam Mostyn, who is determined to make civics education and media literacy the hallmarks of her tenure, and former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill, whose new role with the McKinnon Foundation has him looking at how we can best safeguard Australia’s democracy. 

And there has been some process on that front… Our national curriculum now makes media literacy a priority as well - that’s a pretty recent development… 
Yep, last month ACARA, the body that oversees the national curriculum, released an update mandating the teaching of media literacy across all year levels in Australian schools. And, happily for us, it recommended Newshounds as a resource that teachers should consider using…

And just finally, Bryce, for any teachers or parents who might be reading this, why is The Big Threat worth a listen?
I think it’s very easy for us to sit down here in Australia and feel like we’re far removed from these problems. Our physical distance has for a very long time meant that we were insulated from these sorts of crises, but the internet has changed all of that. In The Big Threat, I talk about the global information wars, and Australia is as susceptible and vulnerable in that battle as any other nation in the world… I hope The Big Threat podcast is something that is going to focus the minds, not only of Squiz listeners who are already very well informed and educated, but hopefully of our government to take these threats seriously and to accelerate their commitment to making sure that Australia has a media literate population, and that this becomes a national priority for us.

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Onto our Recommendations

Listening: You can listen to the first episode of The Big Threat on our News Club channel here…

Check out: Newshounds, the free media literacy resource developed by Squiz Kids for primary school classrooms that teaches kids how to spot misinformation and learn to filter online fact from fiction. And send it on to any teachers/parents you think might be interested…

Email us: We’re planning a fresh episode of Ask the Squiz, so we’re putting the call out for your questions about the news… If you’ve got anything you’d like explained by Claire and Andrew, please get in touch with us at [email protected] - we love getting your questions.

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