The papers that addressed fake news were some of the best presented at 2020’s International Public Relations Research Conference. Not only are they topical, given the fake news swirling about the pandemic and the US elections, but they provide practical techniques for dealing with it:
1. Refute disinformation to reduce its believability
Given their day jobs as military Public Affairs Officers, understanding how to refute fake news is a critical skill for the three grad students from San Diego State that addressed the role of believability in their paper, “Fighting Disinformation, a study of response strategies and public perceptions of truth.” US Navy Public Affairs Officer (PAO) Chloe Morgan, APR+M, US Coast Guard PAO Corinne Zilnicki, and US Marine PAO Diann Rosenfeld, APR + M, used a pre- and post-test experiment to determine what worked and what didn’t when responding to a disinformation attack. Their simulation was right out of real life: a disinformation attack from Iran. They tested various response strategies from Situational Crisis Communication Theory.
Results showed that the most effective response was strongly refuting the information, which helped to boost both the credibility of the refuting source as well as the believability of their messages, and at the same time decreasing the opposition’s credibility.
In fact, pretty much any form of denial of whatever the disinformation is helps reduce the believability of the source and credibility of their statement, according to their research. Even better if you can illustrate your denial or refutation; good imagery decreases the credibility of your opposition’s claims while increasing yours.
The scariest finding of their research was that without denial or refutation the reputation of the aggressor increases.
Finally, the best predictor of whether disinformation will be believed is the reputation of both the aggressor and the victim in the mind of the reader. So if you have an existing reputation for being trustworthy and credible, disinformation will not hurt your reputation as much as it would if you don’t have a good reputation to begin with.
2. The experts’ advice on how to prepare for a fake news attack
A study conducted by Cheryl Ann Lambert, PHD, Michele Ewing, APR, and Toqa Hassan, MA, from Kent State University, provided some much-needed practical guidance on how you can prepare for a fake news attack. For “Watchful Waiting: How Pubic Relations Practitioners Prepare for a Fake News Crisis” they conducted in-depth interviews with eight senior-level PR practitioners with an average of 11 years’ experience in crisis management in a variety of industries.
The experts’ collective advice is practical and enormously helpful. They listed several key steps that help them get through fake news crises.
Before deciding how to respond, they need answers to several specific questions:
- How old is the story?
- Is this a new worry, or just an old grievance?
- What is the status of the poster?
It’s not just how many followers they have, it’s also how relevant the poster is to your audience. One interviewee pointed to Trump tweets that might reach a large number of people, but were pretty irrelevant to her local audience. - Where is the attack coming from?
Is the attack coming from a platform that is relevant to your target market and stakeholders? A major issue on TikTok might matter to a consumer company, but probably not to a life sciences company that markets million-dollar products to lab researchers over 45 years of age. - Is it gaining momentum?
This is an area where AI can help, or just a bit of longitudinal research. How big is your “blip” in negative coverage compared to all other crises? How quickly is it gaining traction? Is this a long slow burn over time with customers piling on steadily, or is this a fast-moving firestorm that spikes, can be denied, and will then disappear? When did you hit peak traffic?
Plan ahead. If, after considering the above questions, the decision is made to respond, then participants agreed that the longer it takes to clarify your message, the worst the crisis will get. So it is good practice to set up a standard approval process for fake news issues well in advance of actually needing to use it.
When responding, make sure you have the right spokesperson. If the CEO has the knowledge, expertise, and credibility to respond, great. They are the perfect spokesperson. If the CEO was the one who said or did something dumb, or otherwise is responsible for the crisis, then they are the only spokesperson who the media needs to hear from. On the other hand, if you’re battling trolls then you may need social allies that aren’t necessarily employees or part of your company. So cultivate a few advocates out there to help you if and when you need allies. ∞
Photo by Christian Gertenbach on Unsplash
