92Y Hosts Roundtable Talk on Misinformation Ahead of 2020 Presidential Election

With the presidential election just weeks away, stand-up comedian, writer and producer Wyatt Cenac led an online, roundtable discussion on Thursday, October 8, 2020, about the threat of misinformation.

For Claire Wardle, the co-founder of First Draft and an expert on user-generated content, verification and misinformation, understanding the threat requires recognizing the difference between disinformation and misinformation. "Disinformation is false information being shared by people who know it’s false, and they’re deliberately trying to cause harm," Wardle explained, whereas the latter is the unconscious spreading of misleading content.

From Top to Bottom: screenshot of Amy Cohen, Jeff Kao, Wyatt Cenac and Claire Wardle discussing the misinformation of Thomas Kennedy’s twitter post about Wisconsin's USPS mailboxes

With these definitions in mind, the panelists analyzed an example of misinformation. This past August, Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) tweeted a picture of stacked mailboxes in Wisconsin and suggested that Republicans were "sabotaging USPS" and that it was "part of their plan to steal the election." Upon further investigation by First Draft, the nonprofit concluded that the photo was real, but the mailboxes were not being sabotaged. Instead, they were being sent to a refurbishing facility.

Although the tweet garnered much spectatorship and circulation from people "on the left," the panelists agreed that misinformation is not a partisan issue. "There’s this idea that one side is responsible for the misinformation that’s out there," said Amy Cohen, the executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors. "And the fact of the matter is that it’s coming from everywhere."

Screenshot of Amy Cohen, Jeff Kao, Wyatt Cenac and Claire Wardle from the their online roundtable discussion, “The Threat of Misinformation”

The prevalence of misinformation inevitably has the potential to affect this year’s election. The panelists assured viewers, however, that by developing a sense of skepticism, they can fight misinformation. "Media literacy can really help combat a lot of that," said ProPublica computational journalist Jeff Kao. "Hopefully, we’ll get to a place where people can understand how information gets to them and why certain information rises to the top, and with that understanding, sort of combat this information on a personal level."