Astrid Welford, Trainee Press Officer at the Science Media Centre, summarises expert views on how to fight back against misinformation and the current challenges in doing so, following Stempra’s 2026 Communications Training Day.
As science communicators, a critical part of our jobs is making sure that the science we are communicating to the general public is accurate and evidence based. At this year’s Communications Training Day, we heard from an excellent panel of science communicators and misinformation experts about the current misinformation landscape, and the best ways to combat it on the ground.
Misinformation defined
Shayoni Lynn (the CEO and founder of Lynn) was the perfect person to introduce this panel, giving us a welcome overview of the misinformation landscape. She defined disinformation as misinformation with mal-intent, and mal-information as misleading information that contains a kernel of truth. She then went into the complex, overlapping and emotional reasons that people are susceptible to misinformation, such as being part of a social in-group and certain pieces of information aligning with previously established values. She left us with a seed of hope, saying that it is very possible for embedded beliefs to be changed over time.
Tried and tested methods
Freya Robb from the Science Media Centre then gave a presentation about how to counteract misinformation on the ground as press officers, and why engaging with the news media still matters. She spoke about how despite the changing media landscape, the public remains engaged with science in the news even if it is through more modern forms. The important work of press officers was also central to her talk, pointing out that the proactive research communications we all do every day is fighting misinformation and that we should always be encouraging our scientists to speak out. Scientists are some of the most trusted voices in society and this trust must be earnt.
Harnessing AI
The final talk from this panel was from Mark Frankel, head of public affairs at Full Fact, a leading independent fact checking organisation. He opened his talk by saying that he doesn’t like the phrase ‘fact checking’ and thinks it has become too toxic and political. He then went on to discuss the strategies they are developing at Full Fact to build a better information environment and to restore trust with the public. One of the most interesting things Mark discussed was Full Fact’s approach to AI. They believe in using AI for good, saying it would be short sighted to pretend it isn’t here and to attempt to put the technology back in the box; the best approach is ethical and responsible use. From that thinking, they have (in partnership with Google) developed tools that allow them to identify the most important claims that need to be fact checked each day, find repeats of things they have previously checked and speed up the process of fact checking in general. Mark also updated us to some concerning uses of AI where experts are being deep faked on social media in order to spread misinformation.
The session ended with a Q&A. There were some understandably worried press officers asking about how to avoid their researchers being deep faked, which the panel answered thoughtfully by saying to always be cognizant of risk, but also to balance this against the risk of telling scientists not to engage with the media, which could only damage the information environment.
As a final question – the panel was asked: how would you fix misinformation with unlimited resources?
- Shayoni said: Address the systems and platforms which incentivise misinformation, and provide more education on media literacy and critical thinking
- Freya said: Give both journalists and scientists more time and resources (she pointed out this is well within our power now!)
- Mark said: Buy every social media platform and regulate them.
Thank you so much to the Stempra committee, and especially Sam Shepherd at UKRI for putting together and chairing such an interesting and stimulating panel to help us all keep fighting misinformation.