Researchers find significant levels of misinformation on social media, especially in the run-up to local elections, and make recommendations.
More and more of us rely on social media for our news. In fact, researchers Jamie Gollings and Niamh O Regan from the Social Market Foundation have found that for people in the UK, social media is the second-largest news source: 46% of us get our news from such sources, compared to 51% from TV.
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That’s why the findings of their survey of more than 125,000 social media posts is so alarming. They found misinformation in 28% of posts on X, in 4% of posts on Facebook and in three of 19 posts on Nextdoor.
Read the full Social Market Foundation report: No news is good news – The hidden threat of unchecked local misinformation
Places with local elections saw more misinformation, on average, in the run up to polling day. Across four local Facebook groups in the Gorton and Denton area – where the local election was hotly contested – 3.3% of 1,000 posts contained misinformation, compared to the national average of 0.1%.
The research also found that there was nearly three times as much misinformation within local authority areas with no or limited local news outlets such as newspapers – which it calls ‘news deserts.’
And the researchers warn that because fake news posts could be removed before they logged it, their findings present only the lower limit of what’s going on.
They call for communications regulator Ofcom to test social media platforms’ ability to tackle misinformation and fake accounts. In March, MPs grilled leading figures at Google, Meta, TikTok and X on exactly this issue – and were not happy with their answers.
The report also calls for social media platforms to abide by protocols on reporting crisis and national and local elections, find ways to label content from trusted sources such as the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), Independent Monitor of the Press (IMPRESS), registered news organisations, public sector broadcasters and local democracy reporters (LDRs), and flag content from new or potentially inauthentic users.
In addition, the report calls for greater transparency in and analysis of data on misinformation, and for forensic watermarking of AI-generated images, audio and video.
Among measures for central and local government, the authors call for investment in awareness campaigns about misinformation, especially ahead of elections, the training of community leaders so they can better challenge false narratives, and increased media literacy in PHSE education in schools – on the model seen in Finland.
It also suggests making it easier for local news outlets to gain charitable status, an expansion of BBC and ITV news content on to social media channels, and a strengthened and expanded LDR service. Local authorities and institutions, it says, should trademark their logos and insignia so that they have legal powers to protect against their misuse.
Baroness MacLeod of Camusdarach, in her foreword to the report, says: ‘The bald statistics do not make comfortable reading for those concerned about democracy and representation at either a national or a local level. Hundreds of local papers have closed, over four million people live in a news desert, and there are few reliable sources of information. Councils and courts operate in a vacuum, and decisions affecting lives day to day are made without any public scrutiny.’
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