From this premise emerges the current definition of the debunker: not just the one who debunks myths and disproves hoaxes, but a true assistant, who can provide the public with the tools to recognize fake news, who points out when a media outlet is reporting a fact incompletely (usually intentionally), and who directs those who have gaps on a topic and are confused by multiple conflicting opinions to reliable sources. Unlike the teacher, the debunker does not provide the notions to be stored, but helps quell the confusion generated by the massive arrival of new notions about which one is unprepared.
A representative example of how today’s debunker does his job can be found in an article by Butac‘s editorial staff on the Xylella epidemic among Apulian olive trees, “Xylella is a hoax that is cured by magic.” The text is an examination of an article published in Fatto Quotidiano, which supports the idea that the Xylella fastidiosa bacterium does not cause the death of olive trees. Butac’s author did not engage in a response to these claims with a report on Xylella full of references from the scientific literature. Instead, he pointed out the unreliability of the sources used in the article. He then focused on the misleading use of scientific terms and concepts, deliberately used out of context to make authoritative unverified (or unverifiable) claims. Finally, the debunker reminded readers that although the author of the Fatto Quotidiano article is an established genetics researcher, this is not enough to overturn the last 150 years of discoveries in microbiology.
Informing: a race against time
The confusion that debunkers set out to resolve is mainly generated by the amount of information reaching the individual, often without the individual having actively sought it. The need to have to produce more and more information is attributable to a chase after novelty. The factors behind this phenomenon are many, but undoubtedly giving a strong impetus is the goal of keeping the user within the media he or she is using for as long as possible.
This implies that news agencies, in order to maintain the “productive pace” of new news, find themselves reducing the resources invested in fact-checking; as a result, media channels such as TV, radio and social have no reason to filter what is reported by the agency, as their goal is ubiquity and virality, not depth and truthfulness of the news.
An emblematic example of how much the chase for news comes at the expense of fact-checking is what happened in 2019 (and recently) regarding the spillage of water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean. Again, an analysis done by Butac highlights the critical nature of the way the news was spread. The analysis compares alarming headlines in several Italian media outlets with what was published by a British news agency. In both cases, the articles were based on the latest statements by Japan’s environment minister, but the analysis points out how the British agency stuck to the minister’s statements, without commenting on them and with appropriate use of quotation marks.
Science is falsifiable, fake news is not
Also making the figure of the debunker almost essential within the contemporary information landscape is the alarming research (such as the 2018 research by Soroush Vossoughi, Sinan Aral, and Deb Roy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) that has highlighted how fake news propagates much faster than real news. This type of news spreads effectively in the echo chambers that online companies build based on user interests. Through the digital footprints that users leave behind when they visit a site, algorithms tend to personalize the online browsing experience by showing the same advertisements, news, posts, to everyone with similar footprints. While this confinement of easily suggestible users to isolated niches may seem like a good thing, it also creates a strong loyalty of those users to pages promoting fake news. A loyalty that in some individuals can degenerate into blind idolatry, in which the user disregards any other source of information and constructs their own worldview solely on the basis of what they learn from their echo chamber.
Regarding the reasons why a person may come to close communication bridges with anyone who does not espouse his or her view of reality, extensive sociological studies are being conducted. What is observed is people’s need to find a narrative that satisfies them, without investigating whether the narrative in question corresponds to the facts. The phenomenon of the need for a satisfying personal narrative has become so acute over the years that it has also reopened the philosophical debate: Is there an objective reality? Is truth absolute or relative? Does only science hold the truth?
In her book A theory of Modernity, author Ágnes Heller sets out the thinking of various thinkers who have attempted to answer these questions over time. Some philosophers of the past century have proposed the existence of different types of truth. In particular, there has long been an attempt (and the debate is still open) to separate non-falsifiable truths, such as mathematical truths, from falsifiable truths, meaning statements that are true until someone comes along and declares them false: this, according to Popper, is the proper character of scientific theories. To these, however, could be added a third kind of truth, also unfalsifiable: religious revelation, expressed through statements that impose themselves as true in themselves.
Keeping this distinction in mind, it is evident how, while modern science bases its veracity on algebraic results, on the other hand, and this is the interesting point, philosophical thinking sees the specificity of scientific assertions in their being falsifiable statements, always open to refutation. The thinking that distinguishes those who firmly believe in fake news, on the other hand, is based only on the last type of truth described above: revealed statements that state a truth without providing a reason for it.
A losing battle?
Thanks to the reflections offered by the philosophical debate, it is possible to grasp how debunkers play a very difficult role: reconstructing the path that led to the dissemination of new information, from its production (a scientific article, an event, a statement) to posts on social networks. This is done by comparing independent sources and the consensus of all stakeholders on the facts exposed. In a nutshell, when faced with news, they look for its weaknesses and assess whether a refutation follows. And if they do not find it, debunkers also look to assess whether other refutations on the same topic are reliable (as in the Xylella example). This set of practices, which has come to be known as fact-checking, often takes root poorly on those who have long relied on information sources that put forth news as revealed truths, ending up, paradoxically, reinforcing their belief. Because the narrative is more important than the facts.
Explicating this problem is the mechanism of sharing without review on which social platforms are based. The people, or algorithms, that produce false, unverified or unverifiable information have two goals: to create content that has a strong emotional impact (so as to push the user to share it), but at the same time is believable (that does not entice the user to review). This creates a narrative that can exploit many cognitive biases – which everyone is subject to without exception – to take root on the viewer’s view of reality.
The mechanism of sharing without revision is particularly widespread and effective because the human brain is heuristic, so it seeks connections between the new element and what it already knows, what it has already experienced. Consequently, the moment a media provides a highly emotional narrative, with which people are likely to associate personal experiences, that media is guaranteed to disseminate that narrative.
In conclusion, it is good to remember that these phenomena are never entirely eliminable, precisely because they exploit mechanisms inherent in the human brain. Fake news has always existed, and debunking does not aim to make it disappear forever. What debunkers are currently focusing on is warning the public that they cannot rely only on the narratives they are most likely to identify with, because they risk becoming manipulable. Through prevention, debunking pursues the goal of providing shared knowledge that remains solid over time, especially on scientific issues. In this way, it is possible to change the historical a priori on which the narratives are based: the existence of witches is certainly not part of today’s debate, because the historical a priori built on shared knowledge places the problem at the margins, whereas in the past the existence of witches was central to religious, medical, and political discussions. The hope is that in the future, thanks in part to debunkers, it will be possible to leave at the margins of the debate anything that deviates from the facts by serving a misleading narrative, and questions arising from the arrival of new knowledge will be placed at the center.
Graduated in Molecular Biology and Evolutionary Biology (UniPd), he is passionate about scientific essays.
He comes to Atmosphera Lab with the intention of putting himself to the test and writing about what has always moved his curiosity: the environment.
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