Fact-checking is not the only means for news organisations to disseminate the right information to the general public.
As news editor and anti-disinformation lead of BBC Monitoring Rebecca Skippage found during her Journalism Fellowship at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, reporting good quality information also require these organisations to reach out to their audience and engage with them to be part of efforts in confronting misinformation.
This is especially the case for public service media (PSM), where they operate in areas in which communities do not have a lot of channels to choose from in terms of news consumption.
When used effectively, audience engagement can be part of a more holistic approach for the public sector to ensure accessibility in accurate and reliable information through policies governed by open government principles.
These principles – that of “transparency, integrity, accountability and stakeholder participation”, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – can provide governments the foundation in creating policies that focus on bolstering media and information ecosystems.
Strengthening these ecosystems will work hand in hand in combating misinformation and protecting the media’s role as pillars of democratic societies, subsequently fostering trust between governments and their citizens.
“To this end, (governments) may wish to prioritise thinking about how to move from public communication approaches centred primarily on disseminating official information to more strategic ones that focus on increasing transparency and participation, promoting better policy making and improving service design and delivery,” write authors of the OECD Working Paper on Public Governance concerning governance response to disinformation.
Screengrab from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRGzq3vGb8Y
The five ways of delivering good quality information
Based on her Journalism Fellowship Paper, Skippage outlines five ways PSM organisations, as well as other news agencies, can deal with misinformation together with their audience.
The first is understanding the audience, where PSM organisations need to change the way they operate from expecting audience to find them to searching them out, speaking to them to identify their backgrounds and interests.
“Ask: how is this ‘un-reached’ audience networked? Which spaces are they in? What platforms? What networks? How can we meet them there, and produce material they’ll find engaging?” says Skippage.
The second is taking a ‘storytelling’ approach in the way PSM organisations produce their content, because when humans find it easy to process materials that are on repeat, they are more likely to accept and remember them.
“So, focus on the human impact of disinformation and how it affects individuals. Keep design simple and engaging. Speak the language of the space you’re in. And keep repeating key points.”
Thirdly, PSM organisations should get their audience involved by establishing a community dedicated to tackling misinformation through peer-to-peer learning and crowd-sourced problem solving.
To that end, Skippage suggests collaborating with communities or other news organisations who share the same belief to establish an army of “anti-disinformation warriors”.
Fourthly, PSM organisations need to set up the right approach and process that allow them to be agile in debunking misinformation.
This can include utilising different platforms, preparing materials in situations where misinformation is bound to spread out wide, creating content regarding ways of avoiding misinformation, and repeating anti-misinformation content and materials constantly.
Last but not least, PSM organisations must review their efforts and impact, whether through platform metrics or seeking opinions from their audience to ascertain what has been effective and what has not.
