Last year, posters appeared across Oregon ‘promoting’ Central Oregon Pride. Featuring a well-known drag performer, 10-year-old Desmond Napoles, the posters claimed that the pride event was sponsored by the North American Man/Love Boy Association. It was of course disinformation. A targeted campaign to try and link pride and sexual predators who prey on children.
2018 saw a rise in fake news never seen before. It was massively used by all forms of conservative or populist branches: from Conservative Christians trying to spread the rumor that a new movie would depict Jesus and his disciples as gay lovers, to Brazil’s Bolsonaro intoxicating the electoral debate with claims of a “gay kit” promoted by his opponent that would aim to turn children gay.
Fake news is not a new issue for LGBT+ people or the charities and campaigns who represent them. What’s new is the scale of the problem. Social media has supercharged disinformation; groups and governments opposed to LGBT rights can now create and share fake news with just a few clicks of a mouse. That poses a real threat. But what can charities, campaigns and activists do?
First and foremost, there’s a need for direct action. As the case of Oregon Pride shows, fake news is a very real risk for organisations. Imagine if vigilantes had seen those posters and taken matters into their own hands. Moreover, these sort of attacks undermine and weaken charities, delegitimise their activities and hurt the cause they fight for.
As such, tackling fake news now needs to be seen as a core communication issue. The right strategies, skills and tools are needed.
The obvious response to fake news is to fight it head on. But be warned – it’s important to recognise the goal of those who spread lies and disinformation. In the case of Oregon Pride and other disinformation campaigns like it, the goal was to portray the idea that LGBTQ+ people are having an internal debate over including sexual predators into the queer rainbow. Denying it would mean walking right into the trap, because there is no debate.
Research has shown if a lie needs to be repeated, it’s best to limit it’s description. Because rehashing lies to debunk them can make them more ‘sticky’. Instead, giving audiences new and credible information is more effective at undermining misinformation.
Also, its important to consider the medium of any response. Video can be highly effective in correcting misinformation, a recent study found. Fact-checking videos seem to increase attention and reduce confusion compared to text or written rebuttals.
However, LGBT+ charities, campaigns and activists can only do so much alone. Resources in the sector are often tight. And importantly, a disinformation campaign against just one LGBT+ organisation can cause collateral damage to the wider community. Indeed this is often the aim – to slowly build a broader negative narrative about the queer community through a drip-drip of individual stories and memes. An attack on one therefore needs to be seen as an attack on all.
In light of that, it’s worth considering what can be learnt from Lithuania’s ‘elves’ project – a coalition of activists, academics, professionals and civil society groups who are fighting on the digital frontline against Russian troll attacks. Could there be national – or even international – LGBT versions, who could fight the spread of fake news targeted at, or impacting on, LGBT people?
These measures would go a long way to preparing the sector for what lies ahead – a resurgent far right and an increasing number of authoritarian and regressive governments. The problem though is that these sorts of tactics only address the problem when it arises. What about action to tackle it before it becomes a problem?
Most fake news is spread via social networks. It’s therefore crucial to look at how to work with them on this issue. Because even when they have taken action to tackle disinformation, there has been little thought to how it could impact on the LGBT+ community.
Only last year for example, Facebook announced plans to disseminate a survey to its users which would determine the trustworthiness of news publications. At first glance this looks like a good thing. But LGBT charities began asking questions. What about conscious and subconscious bias? If members of the public were homophobic for example, what’s to stop them downgrading LGBT publications because they don’t like gays? The sector needs to be in the room having a open and honest conversation with social networks when they consider these sorts of actions.
As we’ve seen however, social networks are moving slowly on issues of disinformation and doing the bare minimum to tackle it. So LGBT+ organisations should think about developing their own tools that work with social networks. In Taiwan for example, CoFacts, a voluntary, collaborative chatbot for factchecking questionable messages being disseminated on Line was used effectively during the gay marriage referendum.
Nevertheless, the problem posed by social networks suggests that regulation is also required.This is not without it’s problems though.
Consider Malaysia, which led the world in passing the first ever Anti Fake News Act. Sounds good doesn’t it? Except the law was largely criticised by civil society for being too encompassing. It imposed hefty fines and jail time on “any person who, by any means, creates, offers, publishes, prints, distributes, circulates or disseminates any fake news or publication containing fake news”.
Regulation like this all suffers from the same problem – how to walk the thin line between tackling fake news and veering into political censorship. Activists across the world will attest to the fact that the term ‘fake news’ is itself becoming weaponised, not just applying to genuine misinformation, but also opinion that people strongly disagree with and even satire. LGBT organisations are acutely aware of the dangers this can pose.
As such, it seems important for LGBT+ organisations to be in the room from the very start when legislation like this is being debated and drafted. The European Union, for example, is considering further regulation on social networks. And so too are countries across the world. At both a national and international level it seems useful for LGBT organisations to partner with free speech and civil rights organisations, to hash out what would be effective and jointly advocate for effective policies.
