[Applause]
so I want to talk to you about fake news
and disinformation and I want to leave
you at the end with one idea one concept
one technique that anybody who prefers
information to disinformation can use on
a daily basis but that’s for the end
let’s start with a legendary piece of
the ancient Greeks put out the
information they claimed that this horse
was a gift to the gods the Trojans of
course soon discovered that that was
fake news as the soldiers hidden inside
opened the doors of Troy for the Greek
army to launch a successful attack so we
know that fake news and this information
isn’t new so why should we care about it
right now well one reason is that it’s
just as powerful as it always was and
its applications go way beyond the
military sphere today populist and
extremist politicians use disinformation
and fake news techniques to marginalize
vulnerable groups within our societies
and so-called alternative facts are used
by some to try to undermine the base of
science and knowledge that an
organization like the joint research
center here in is pura tries to build
and spread but there’s also something
much more fundamental going on and
social media is in many ways a wonderful
tool but the fact is that it’s
revolutionized the disinformation game
in at least two crucial ways the first
is the sheer volume of information
nowadays with which we’re bombarded on
our social media feeds on our Facebook
feeds and so on makes it very very
difficult to think clearly about any
individual piece of information that
you’re receiving and the second
challenge is that it’s not so long ago
that in order to reach an audience of
millions you needed to be a famous
politician or journalist or a movie star
nowadays at least in principle all that
you need is a smartphone to give you an
idea of the scale of that issue it’s
estimated that every day around 3.5
billion not million 3.5 billion people
use the Internet one way or another
that’s close to half of the entire
population of the planet and this has
people like the inventor of the world
wide web sat in berners-lee very
concerned certain invented the web as a
tool to empower people to share
information and ideas across borders but
he recently gave an interview where he
said that he was very concerned that the
system was failing and he was especially
concerned about algorithms the channel
information into people’s social media
feeds
how ironic then that a tool a technology
that was explicitly designed to empower
people is leaving many people feeling
disempowered and at the mercy of
algorithms that they don’t understand
that maybe even certain doesn’t fully
understand and that’s why I want to
share with you today the story of a
research project that I’ve been leading
here at the joint Research Center over
the past year or so it began with a
series of articles to
at the end of 2016 which alleged that
people were being not just targeted on
social media but psychologically
targeted and at the individual level so
millions and millions of voters
according to the article were being
profiled just like everybody in this
room could be and having individual
messages tailored to whether they are
perhaps extrovert or introvert and so on
sent to them to try to influence how
they would vote and our initial task was
to try to work out how realistic how
accurate this claim or set of claims
might be now this is an area that the
GRC the joint research center has been
working in for a number of years already
so one of the first things that I did
when I was asked to lead this project
was to go and have a coffee with my
friend Eric Eric his computer scientist
who’s been working on monitoring of an
information and also disinformation on
the worldwide web and the internet for a
number of years and one of the first
questions that I asked him was how good
are computers nowadays at separating
news from fake news information from
disinformation and what Eric said to me
was that although a lot of progress have
been made in recent years computers
still struggle with things like humor
and irony and disinformation which is
deliberately placed in that gray area
somewhere in between absolute truth and
absolute fiction so it was clear to me
that we were going to build on the
knowledge that the joint research center
had already established and work with
Eric and his colleagues but we also
needed a broader approach so we work
with a number of other scientific
perspectives with psychologists
economists political scientists
journalists and social media
practitioners like my friend Dennis you
who have real hands-on experience of run
social media campaigns and I want to
share the three main findings of that
research with you and then leave you
with one idea that I hope you’ll enjoy
using and sharing and maybe even
especially with your children those that
have children because they are after all
the social media generation so the first
result from this work is that we’re not
quite in the brave new world that and
the articles were suggesting the reason
is that although there is some frontier
research which is as sophisticated as
what the articles were alleging were as
sure as we possibly can be from talking
to experts in the field that the
techniques that were actually being used
were considerably simpler but they used
because they’re incredibly effective
so the second message I want to share
with you is what those methods are and
here you need to remember three key
words target test ream essage target
means the kind of demographic profiling
targeting which has been commonplace in
advertising and political marketing for
decades but this book especially lets
you do that with a level of precision
which was unimaginable even a few years
ago for example if I want to target all
of the voters who live within a two mile
or three kilometer radius of a factory
which has just closed down or it could
be a hospital in another state in the US
or it could be any type of locality or
establishment potentially all over the
world on Facebook that’s just not a
problem and remember that I can do this
thousands of times in different
locations for different groups of users
so once you’ve done the first part
targeting you move on to the second part
testing and this is where social media
has again really revolutionized and a
we can use that term advisedly the way
in which a lot of the information but
also disinformation game actually works
in the old days if you wanted to put out
a series of adverts this kind of thing
you would pay an agency to create the
perfect message and then put that on
billboards and TV screens all over the
country and the joke at the time among
people running companies was I know I
waste half the money that I spend on
advertising I just don’t know which half
and social media has completely changed
that because you get real-time feedback
just like if you do a tweet on who’s
liking sharing and so on the information
and what that means is that incredibly
perhaps nowadays in social media
marketing people don’t worry too much
about the contents of each individual
message rather they produce a large
number and very scientifically in many
ways simply get the empirical evidence
about what works if it works boost the
posts by spending more money on it and
if it doesn’t don’t worry about it you
just throw it in the bin and try some
new messages so the third part re
messaging is what you do for those
pieces of social media advertising that
work the last message that I want to
share with you and is all about
psychology and it’s that psychology
matters a very great deal but not in the
way that those media articles were
alleging Daniel Kahneman the Nobel Prize
winner says that there are two distinct
types of brain operation system one is
the immediate intuitive super
fast-acting brain this was essential in
our evolution for example when our
ancestors lived on the savanna if a wild
animal comes running towards you it’s
system one that tells run on a warmer
day than the
in Italy if you walk past a great
Gillett area it’s also system one that
tells you buy an ice cream system two on
the other hand is the slower more
deliberative system that we use when
reading thinking and therefore to
distinguish fact from fiction real news
from fake news now let’s just take a
moment to see how it feels remind
ourselves to be bombarded with so much
information what you see is that
although there is some text its images
that dominate and that’s not a surprise
to brain scientists because it’s long
been understood that the brain system
which or the elements of the brain
system which are most closely associated
with system one namely the amygdala
within the limbic system are extremely
visual in a phrase system one loves
images and in that sense the methods
that populist politicians and
advertisers are using are very much
grounded in science in many ways what
they’re trying to do is to get you not
not to think at all in a system to since
they want to send you an image which you
almost feel more than you cogitate on
and then you react I’ve occasionally
given this talk to audiences and people
have said you can’t manipulate me with
images I’m too clever for that so I’m
really hoping this is going to work and
I’ve added one additional slide this
evening now if you have a primarily
system to intellectual reaction to that
image I’ve got some phone numbers for
so in conclusion ladies and gentlemen
what are we to do we live and I hope I
think we all cherish being citizens of
democratic societies where it’s
absolutely essential that citizens
can discuss the issues of the day
according to as much as possible
accurate information and not fake
information as much as we possibly can
so I want to share with you one
technique which is deeply grounded in
science which are really hope that
you’re going to share with your friends
and your family and as I say the social
media generation that is our kids and
now it’s so simple this technique that
there’s a risk that you’re going to
think it’s banal but the point is not to
know it or to do it the point is to
remember to do it when it matters and to
introduce it into your habits so if
you’re ready I’m gonna do it once and
then I’m really hoping that we could do
it together I ready okay shall we do it
because the fact is ladies and gentlemen
that the time it takes to breathe in and
breathe out is more than enough time to
let the initial manipulation aimed at
system 1 wash over you and to allow
system to [Music]