If you are late, you are Beyond help : Disinformation and Authorities in Social Media

Fast paced, seemingly vast and ever-growing social media is a challenging environment for public authorities to communicate optimally. One challenge is malicious disinformation, which is intentionally disseminated to deceive and cause harm to citizens and authorities. It is known that exceptional circumstances create opportunities for malicious actors to negatively influence democratic societies. Disinformation is often designed to cause uncertainty towards information that public authorities offer and to decrease the overall trust in public authorities. The aim of disinformation is often to cause polarisation in society and to weaken national security. Furthermore, in a crisis, it is essential that authorities are able to deliver official information quickly, clearly and accurately to citizens. Communication between authorities and citizens in time-sensitive situations is typically online. One challenge to public authorities is how they can mitigate and repair the effects of disinformation and information influencing in complex and time-sensitive circumstances. In this article, our aim is to describe the challenges that public authorities face when communicating in social media spaces where disinformation is present. The empirical data, including 16 government official interviews, was collected in September 2021. The main theme of the interviews was related to how situational awareness about disinformation is formed in their organisations. Our research questions focus on how public authorities detect and counter disinformation in social media and what kind of problems and pressures they have when communicating in such environments. This study follows a qualitative design and the data was analysed using inductive content analysis. This study is part of larger project related to counterforces and the detection of disinformation. The results will provide a broader understanding of how different types of public authorities, from health to security organisations, and from agencies to ministries, communicate in complex environments such as social media

Public Authorities as a Target of Disinformation

Disinformation is a part of a modern digitalised society and thus affects public authorities´ daily work. Through disinformation, malicious actors can often erode the fundamentals of democratic societies. In practice, this can be achieved by influencing authorities’ decision-making processes and creating distrust towards public organisations which can weaken authorities’ ability to function. In Finland, public authorities have relatively transparent and open decision-making processes and communication practices compared to other democratic societies. This transparency and openness can be seen as a vulnerability, increasing the opportunities for malicious actors to use disinformation. The authorities of public services are also seen as producers of evidence-based official information. In general, Finns have very high trust in public authorities. Trust has a major impact on societies’ psychological resilience and susceptibility to disinformation. The results of this article strengthen the idea that disinformation weakens authorities’ ability to function. The producers of disinformation, aided by citizens’ high confidence of public authorities, aim to utilise authorities’ communication by misrepresenting the content according to their own agenda. In this study, our purpose is to describe public authorities’ experiences relating to disinformation in their own organisation. This study follows a qualitative design framework by analysing data collected in September 2021 using inductive content analysis. The empirical data includes 16 government officials’ interviews with themes exploring how disinformation affects their daily activities and why they are targets of disinformation. This article is part of a larger project relating to counterforces and detection of disinformation. The results contribute towards a broader understanding on how different types of public authorities, ranging from health to security organisations, communicate in complex social media environments

Tiedeviestintä hybridiorganisaatiossa tutkijaidentiteetin näkökulmasta

Tiedeviestintää on perinteisesti tutkittu tiedon siirtona tiedon tuottajilta tiedon tarvitsijoille. Viime vuosina ovat lisääntyneet tutkimukset, joissa tiedeviestintä käsitetään kokonaisvaltaisempana identiteettejä ja merkityksiä rakentavana yhteiskunnallisena ilmiönä. Tiedeviestinnän tutkimusperinteestä uupuu tutkimuksia, joissa nousisi esiin erityisesti organisaatiot tiedeviestinnän fasilitaattoreina. Organisaatiot ovat tärkeitä tiedeviestinnän tutkimuskohteita, sillä erilaiset organisaatiot toteuttavat yhä enemmän ja monipuolisemmin tiedeviestintää. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on tutkia, miten hybridiorganisaation tiedeviestintään liittyvissä organisaatiodiskursseissa rakennetaan tutkijaidentiteettiä ja miten se heijastuu käsityksiin tiedeviestinnästä. Tutkijaidentiteettiä lähemmin tarkastelemalla voidaan myös tunnistaa mahdollisia tiedeviestinnän ongelmia. Tutkimusaineisto koostui 14 puolistrukturoidusta teemahaastattelusta, joissa haastateltiin Maanpuolustuskorkeakoulun tutkimushenkilöstöä. Tuloksiksi saatiin neljä tiedeviestintään liittyvää organisaatiodiskurssia. Puolustusvoimien diskurssissa tutkija on ensisijaisesti tutkimuksen tuottaja, ja tiedeviestintä on tutkimuksesta tiedottamista uskottavuuden kasvattamiseksi. Akateemisuuden diskurssissa tutkijaidentiteetti rakentuu uskollisuudesta tutkijan ammatille, jolloin tiedeviestintä määrittyy tutkijan menestymisen elinehdoksi ja velvollisuudeksi. Erityislaatuisen organisaation diskurssissa tutkijaidentiteettiä säätelee organisaation konteksti ja tiedeviestintä muodostuu yleisön palvelemiseksi sekä organisaation näkyvyyden lisäämiseksi. Sotatieteiden diskurssissa tutkija identifioituu sota- ja sotilas- alkuisten termien kautta, ja tiedeviestintä määrittyy ennakkoluulojen korjaamiseksi ja tiedon puutteeseen vastaamiseksi