Freedom of Info

FREEDOM OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION & FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

CAUTIONARY TALES FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM

With New Zealand’s general election only a few short months away, librarians should be considering their role in facilitating access to accurate information for their users.

Last December’s snap general election in the United Kingdom was beset with examples of deliberate manipulation of facts to mislead and sway voters, which serve as salutary lessons for us here in New Zealand. During the first televised general election debate, the Twitter feed of the Conservative Party was renamed ‘factcheckuk,’ and any mention of the party was removed (other than the words ‘from CCHQ’ written in tiny lettering underneath the logo in the banner image). This gave the false impression that this was the Twitter feed of an independent fact-checking body. The feed then misleadingly rolled out endorsements of Boris Johnson and posts supporting the Conservative Party’s position, under the cloak of apparent impartiality.

In response, the UK Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) wrote a formal letter of complaint to the Conservative Party chairman. The letter included reference to CILIP’S campaign #Factsmatter, which called on all parties and holders of public office to make a clear commitment to evidence and accountability: ‘As a profession and as a professional association, we believe that it is the right of every citizen to receive accurate and open information, and the responsibility of public authorities to ensure that they are providing it – including political Parties. We are committed to supporting citizens in finding and making use of accurate information as part of our work in combating online harms.’

There were reports of other examples of manipulation including the Liberal Democrats distributing pamphlets containing a graph of polling results that appeared to show that Labour was far behind the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives – until you read the fine print under the graph saying that the question asked in the poll was: ‘Imagine that the result of your constituency was expected to be very close between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidate, and none of the other parties was competitive. In this scenario, which party would you vote for?’ The way a graph is displayed as well as its content can be misleading – interpretation can be skewed by tricks such as altering the axes of a graph:

This graph appears to show the Triangle Party at a substantial lead in a constituency. However, the vertical axis has been truncated from the original:

‘Who would you vote for if the Oblong Party were not to stand in your constituency?’

In this view we can see that the margins are less dramatic, and that 10% have indicated their intent to vote for the Oblong Party despite the question indicating that they might not stand a candidate.

Another tool of misinformation used in the UK election was a website created by one party, dressed up to look like information from another. The website labourmanifesto.co.uk was set up by the Conservatives, but masqueraded as a Labour Party website. Social media for the website featured a red background and a picture of the Labour leader, but the website contained attacks on Labour’s policies. The entire enterprise was a cynical attempt to mislead voters looking for reliable information about Labour Party policies.

These are just some examples of how information can be manipulated and misrepresented. It isn’t just one party, or one part of the political spectrum, that uses the Internet and social media in this way; The Express reported that the UK Labour Party spent twice as much as the Tories on sending targeted messages via Facebook in the lead-up to the election. Nor is this unique to the UK; the 2016 United States elections gave us a whole new vocabulary of phrases like ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth.’

Given the use of misinformation in election campaigns in the US and the UK, there have been a range of responses from the ‘major players.’ Google has announced they will no longer allow political campaigns to target advertising at people based on their supposed political leanings. Facebook has announced it will not factcheck advertising from political candidates or campaigns.

Twitter has said it will ban political advertising altogether, although this policy raises issues of its own, and factchecking itself is now starting to become weaponised as a tool of political power.

These are complex and nuanced issues, but as professionals who are committed to facilitating access to accurate information, librarians need to remain vigilant against all forms of political misinformation, however insidious, wherever it comes from and regardless of the motivations behind it.