By Amy Frykman, Deputy Director
On any given day, if you read news coverage or social media content about electric vehicles, you are likely to encounter misinformation (false information disseminated without ill intent) and disinformation (false information disseminated with the intent to mislead).
You may see claims that EVs aren’t really clean; they don’t work in the cold; they hurt the poor; they will crash the electric grid; their batteries catch on fire. The list goes on and on.
For advocates working to clean up the nation’s transportation systems—thereby reducing pollution and addressing climate change—it can be hard to know how and when to respond.
As I shared at a plenary session at the Forth Roadmap conference in Detroit last month, there had been something of a consensus among communications practitioners that responding to misinformation and disinformation can inadvertently reinforce the bad information through something called the backfire effect.
More recent and robust social science research—summarized in the Debunking Handbook, an authoritative resource capturing groundbreaking social psychology research by Dr. John Cook and Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky—demonstrates that the backfire effect is less of an issue than previously thought. And you don’t have to be a social scientist to see that misinformation and disinformation can be incredibly sticky and cause real damage.
Because misinformation can be sticky, we need effective strategies to counter it alongside our proactive messaging strategies. But what’s the right approach? There’s far too much misinformation and disinformation out there to respond to all of it, and we all have limited capacity and time to engage.
In determining the right approach, the Debunking Handbook provides a helpful decision-making flowchart that we’ve adapted at Resource Media for our communications work:
- If the misinformation or disinformation is not widespread and you have no reason to think it will be, then your best approach is to monitor it and stick to your own message.
- If the misinformation or disinformation is not widespread but you anticipate there will be a concerted effort to make it stick—perhaps based on what you’ve seen in other parts of the country—then it’s time for pre-bunking, which involves circulating content that explains the distortion and manipulation people can expect to see so they can spot it and discount it when it arrives.
- If the misinformation and disinformation starts to gain traction, but the framing is still fluid, then it’s best to lean into your own messaging and framing as a flanking strategy.
- If the misinformation and disinformation gains traction and the framing is less fluid, then it’s time to debunk.
When it comes to debunking, there’s an art and science to doing it effectively. Think of the best approach as a four-part “fact” sandwich. As with any sandwich, the quality of the ingredients determines how good or effective it is:
- Start with a simple, pithy and sticky fact that counters the misinformation or disinformation; it needs to be concrete and plausible and fit with the story your audience already understands.
- Warn your audience about the misinformation and mention it once and briefly.
- Explain the fallacy and how the misinformation is wrong or misleading.
- Reinforce the fact again, and multiple times if possible.
To demonstrate this approach in action, let’s take the myth that EVs aren’t really clean. Here’s an example of a debunking “fact” sandwich:
- Fact: EVs are far cleaner than their gas-powered counterparts; numerous life-cycle analyses show that even accounting for pollution associated with manufacturing and electricity powered by coal and gas, EVs are still significantly cleaner than gas cars, regardless of the model and in every part of the country.
- Myth: A common myth circulated by the fossil fuel industry is that EVs are not actually clean due to impacts from manufacturing and mining for battery minerals.
- Fallacy: This myth does not factor in the massive impacts of fossil fuel production alongside emissions from burning gas in gas cars.
- Fact: In fact, study after study shows that EVs are a far cleaner choice in every region in the country, and they will continue to get cleaner as technologies improve and electricity supplies get cleaner.
Encountering misinformation and disinformation on issues you care about can be disheartening and distracting. If you aren’t smart about it, you can spend far too many precious resources responding in ways that aren’t effective.
At the end of the day, from a strategic communications perspective, the most important thing to get right is your own proactive communications strategy.
That means knowing who you need to reach and why, and the best messaging and messengers to achieve your goals. Responding to disinformation or misinformation should always happen in that context, and if you follow the general guidelines described above, you can ensure you respond in the most effective way.
