What's the secret sauce in Finland's fake news fight?

It's not as simple as 'teach the kids how to think better'. Could it actually be about... happiness?

I’ve read some interesting (and challenging!) literature recently around the ‘Misinformation Discourse’.

A lot of smart, serious people (for example here and here) are starting to raise their hands and say: “Woah, hold on a second. We’ve descended into a kind of ‘moral panic’ about existential danger of misinformation, when it’s not clear that…

1. We can agree on a way to define it and study it

2. We can determine to what extent it’s a new problem

3. We can identify to what extent misinformation is a symptom of deeper problems, or the cause of them.”

For what it’s worth, my view is that what we describe as ‘misinformation’ is much closer to a symptom than a cause. I believe this partly because we see this type of challenge rear its head at other points in human history which share a lot of the same challenges that we have today: revolutions in new forms of communication, increasing instability, challenges to old power structures and decreases in living standards for many.

This doesn’t preclude the possibility that the ‘symptom’ of misinformation exacerbates our democratic ailments, thus simultaneously becoming a ‘cause’. It also doesn’t mean — like in medicine — that it’s not worth addressing symptoms alongside the cause. Strategic communication still matters.

Finland’s media literacy agenda

It’s a bit of a cliche that in books about how to make our democracies more resilient to polarisation and misinformation, they end with a chapter that basically argues: ‘teach the kids to think better and in a generation hopefully things will be better’. Media literacy in schools is held up as a tool that can pull the misinformation crisis up by the roots.

Within the media literacy debate, Finland is seen as the shining example of how this approach can protect democracy from misinformation. There’s something deeply attractive about using Finland as an example given its proximity to Russia and its potential vulnerability to Russian influence campaigns. Finland has topped the European media literacy index for several years and much ink has been spilled about the sophisticated psychological theory behind their activities.

Now, there’s no doubt that teaching people how to analyse the credibility of information is helpful — but what if something else is at play here too?

Is happiness the secret to building misinformation resilience?

You’ll notice something remarkable when you compare the top ten list of European countries for media literacy and the top ten countries (globally) for happiness.

Five countries appear on both lists:

1. Finland

2. Denmark

3. Iceland

4. Netherlands

5. Sweden

Correlation isn’t necessarily causation, but it is impossible to ignore the fact that these are all wealthier countries with good education systems, which are relatively stable and democratic. (This is not to say they are without their democratic ailments — which in some ways bolsters the argument that media literacy cannot protect you from populism.)

If you look at the policy landscape of these countries, they tend to score highly for things like parental leave, healthcare, and quality of life. We also know from the literature on our propensity to see the world through conspiracy theories that these beliefs are driven by feelings. Feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and lack of control.

So here we can see two different models of causality:

1. Bad information is causing people to hold mistaken beliefs, which damage democracy and trust in science. Well designed early interventions, like those in Finland, help people avoid the bad information, reducing damage to democracy.

2. People tend to only search for conspiracy theories when their lives feel uncertain and out of control. When countries develop policies which support key areas of life which give people feelings of control, they feel happier, more trusting in government and less like they need grand conspiracy theories about evil elites to explain their circumstances.

Conclusion: It’s BOTH/AND not EITHER/OR

The chances are that misinformation sits somewhere in the middle of on the spectrum of symptom vs cause.

So when it comes to media literacy, it figures that while these interventions in all likelihood do help, they are much less likely to help when people have good reason for not trusting government.

To suggest that the public distrust resulting from of declining living standards, inequality, industrial upheaval from Artificial Intelligence and the green transition, simply needs to be met with lessons on fact checking, reveals a worrying lack of understanding of the scale of the crisis we’re in.

So what is media literacy? Somewhere between a silver bullet and a waste of time. Probably akin to symptom relief during a bad infection.

What media literacy absolutely cannot be, is a distraction for policy and political elites to ignore the real challenges and real fears being faced by large swathes of their public who are increasingly and understandably vulnerable to radical theories and radical solutions.

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