Approaches to Disinformation Detection amongst German Elite Journalism and Business Professionals

The third speaker in this Indicators of Social Cohesion symposium session is Christian Stöcker, whose interest is in Germans’ perceptions of disinformation. Germans generally see disinformation as a threat to democracy, and are concerned about their own ability to detect disinformation when they come across it. But how do German business and journalism elites detect and verify such online disinformation? What detection strategies do they employ, and what design features (text, image, video, audio, memes) do they focus on in verifying online content?

The project engaged in some 25 interviews with such elite users from journalism and business (here, especially managers of communication and security for major companies), in 2022, and coded the results qualitatively. Of the design features, text was checked for disinformation especially by gut feeling (spelling, emotional language, emoji and exclamation marks; stimulus works; or misuse of advertising content), or – especially in journalism – by using analytical approaches (source checking, review of text logics). A smaller number of respondents had no particular strategies, though.

Images and videos (which are easier to consume, attract more attention, and spread further than text) were verified by gut feeling mainly with a focus on appearance and production values; prior knowledge, and prejudices; and a suspicion of deepfakes. Analytical approaches were again more common in journalism, and checked contexts and authenticity. Many professionals have no idea how to address this, too.

Audio disinformation is becoming substantially more prominent in recent times, especially also on TikTok, and many professionals have no idea how to address this. Gut feeling approaches include a focus on emotionalisation (through music and sounds) and sound modification, while analytical approaches examined audio for artificial acceleration, deceleration, and other modifications.

Memes, finally, have by now become important tools of disinformation, yet business professionals in particular have no strategies for addressing them. Gut feeling approaches examine the properties (motifs, reach, etc.), topics, and focus on young people, in particular; while there are no analytical approaches to memetic disinformation currently in place amongst these interviewees.

Overall, business professionals largely relied on gut feeling approaches; journalists are considerably more advanced in their employment of analytical approaches, but to some extent also still rely on gut feeling, especially for audio and meme content. There is a pressing need to develop more analytical approaches and tools for the detection and verification of disinformation content especially in audio and meme form.