Protecting Against Disinformation

Disinformation is everywhere. Ironically, this seems to be one of the few things we can all agree on as fact. It is being spread intentionally and used to divide us by playing on our fears and pushing voters toward authoritarianism. Disinformation is destabilizing our democracy and it’s urgent that we figure out how to protect against it. 

Over the summer, we partnered with GQR* to study how white women are being targeted with disinformation and how it is reaching them. We learned that they are most often getting these false narratives from social media, especially Facebook and Facebook groups, and that the majority of women who have seen a high volume of a particular piece of disinformation believe it. For example, 62% of women who have seen a lot of content about COVID vaccines being unsafe, believe that to be true.

At our nonpartisan affiliate, Galvanize USA, we’re having a uniquely positive impact by offering a bright spot in digital spaces to protect against disinformation. Establishing trust, building skills to spot fake news by sharing informative tools, and encouraging thoughtful dialogue in these moderated, non-judgmental, online communities are key strategies for combating the conditions that allow disinformation to thrive. When we learn to turn away from disinformation instead of spreading it, we all have a better chance of making sense of the world around us and separating facts from the strategies being used to divide us.   

At Galvanize Action, we’ve identified the disinformation narratives and polarizing wedge issues that women are most aware of and find most believable. Some of the most insidious wedges include disinformation about COVID, immigration, socialism, and critical race theory. We use a variety of research strategies—from surveys to focus groups to 1:1 phone calls—to deepen our understanding of what is making these narratives stick with women. We combine this with our knowledge of the values and beliefs that drive vote choice, use all these layers of information to develop persuasion messages, and then rapidly test them with women across the country. These rapid message tests tell us which approaches have the biggest impact and would make the most compelling ads.

For example, immediately following the Supreme Court’s refusal to stay the Texas law that effectively bans abortions in early September, we ran rapid message tests to explore how we might build support to protect reproductive choice for women in Texas. The messages were developed based on lessons learned over the past few years, such as reactions to the Kavanaugh hearings, in which many women were strongly influenced by their desire to protect their husbands and sons from perceived threats. In this message test, white women nationwide were randomly assigned to see either a placebo message or one of the messages we provided, including this one: Under a new law, if your son and his girlfriend accidentally got pregnant and decided they were not ready to become parents, your son could be sued by a stranger for $10,000 or more for driving his girlfriend to the abortion clinic.

Moderate white women were 13 percentage points more likely to oppose a law like this in their state after seeing this message.

Our democracy relies on conversation, and we can’t have thoughtful dialogue when we’re not all working off the same set of facts. By building the skills to identify fake content and developing and testing messages to combat false narratives, we’re protecting against disinformation and protecting our democracy. 

Learn more about our disinformation study and the rapid message testing we’re doing across the country on our Research page. 

* GQR conducted a survey of 1,500 white women registered voters, 300 each from GA, MI, NC, PA, and WI (July 2-11, 2021).