76% of the young leaders surveyed for the Voices of the Leaders of Tomorrow Report 2021 consider it a pressing problem that the line between objective facts and subjective opinion is getting more and more blurred in the media.

On January 6, 2021, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington. They believed Joe Biden “stole” the election and with it the presidency. Trump himself had been stoking anger with this claim for months, but the vast majority of elected officials, judges and election observers disagreed. They found no evidence of irregularities or fraud. The election was recognized as legitimate. But many Trump supporters continued to believe in fraud.

The unprecedented plethora of disinformation and lies that marked Trump’s presidency (The Washington Post Fact Checker, 2021) had therefore culminated in the shocking and – fortunately – failed insurrection that many had believed impossible in the USA. While the coup attempt failed, at least five people died in connection with the storming of the Capitol. It has further divided America, with both sides claiming moral and constitutional superiority.

Increasing Acceptance of Disinformation and Lies

The key issue in this event is that it is not a matter of differing views, but of questioning hard facts that have been backed by various highly regarded sources and institutions beyond suspicion of corruption. Consensus on objective events, on the integrity of formerly esteemed sources, on reality itself, is crumbling. The USA is only one example.

This development can be observed – to varying degrees – in many countries around the world. And the problem seems to be growing. False claims have become “alternative facts” and are often trivialized rather than called what they really are: outright lies.

In a digitally connected world, the spread of misinformation has reached an unforeseen dynamic. The internet makes it easy for more and more people to spread their own opinions or content of dubious origin as factual reports. And social media algorithms accelerate the spread of whatever content is liked within certain bubbles, fueling the construction of peculiar explanations and parallel “realities” where any contradicting news is reflexively labeled “fake news.”

In fact, a strange contrast has developed as a result of the global digitalization of communication: While the world’s different cultures are moving closer together through networks, communities and collaboration, groups with different perceptions of reality are moving further away from each other, regardless of spatial proximity or distance. Facts are denied and twisted if they don’t fit into one’s worldview. The majority of the Leaders of Tomorrow surveyed for this year’s Voices of the Leaders of Tomorrow Report – a collaboration of the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions (NIM) and the St. Gallen Symposium –  also see this development and perceive it as a huge problem.Image

A total of 76% agree with the statement “In general, lying and distorting facts seem to have become more accepted” and see it as a pressing problem. Just as many assess the blurring of facts and opinions as a pressing problem of our time.

Tommy Koh, a young civil servant from Singapore, emphasizes the relevance of the issue: “The erosion of commonly held truths is the most existential threat to modern democracy. If there are no common facts, there is no common understanding. How might we tackle misinformation while being sensitive to race, class, gender, and other forms of discrimination? There are no easy solutions. But hoping for a return to pre-constructivist beliefs where central bodies decide what is factual is neither palatable nor fair. I suspect the way forward requires us to pay attention to social cohesion. Trust and human connection are deeply coupled. If our interactions with others decay, the bubbles we live in will contain us in a subjective reality. This prevents us from understanding and empathizing with others, which in turn leads to trust decay. Left unchecked, trust decay will lead to truth decay and a loss of governability.”

Reliability of and Trust in Media

Is the fake news problem limited to the internet? The press and new media are often referred to as the fourth power in democratic societies. While not an official part of the political system, their social influence is strong. For this reason alone, journalists should feel obliged to keep to the truth. Nevertheless, fake news, that is, deceptions and their dissemination – sometimes deliberate, sometimes even in good faith – have obviously become an omnipresent problem for trust. So, which media have the biggest problem in this regard, and which receive comparatively few accusations of fake content? The Leaders of Tomorrow take a clear stand here as well.

Newspapers are apparently regarded as the most trustworthy media. Nearly 70% agree that they carry fake news only sometimes at most, and only 25% believe that this happens frequently.

Unfortunately, it is exactly this most trusted news source that has been losing subscribers and revenue to the new, more polarizing social media sources over at least the last two decades. The exact opposite is the case with social media. In total, 90% of all survey participants report that fake news frequently circulates there. This number is not much lower for video channels and private networks on the internet (83% and 74%). All traditional media – that is, TV and news magazines in addition to the above-mentioned newspapers – perform significantly better than online media.

This scathing criticism of social media is remarkable because, after all, Leaders of Tomorrow are digital natives. And apparently, they view their own generation as a whole as too uncritical in this regard, as the following results show.

Criticism of Own Generation’s Relationship with Social Media

The Leaders of Tomorrow consider their own generation to be too gullible when it comes to social media and peer-to-peer networks. They criticize them sharply. A total of 69% agree with the statement ”My generation has too much (blind) faith in the news spread by social media.” More than 50% consider this blind trust not only a given, but also an urgent problem.

They also think that their own generation tends to rely a lot on information by friends and peers. More than 70% agree with the statement ”Trust in information distributed by official news channels is often lower than trust in information spread by like-minded people or peers,” and 46% consider it a pressing problem.

Fake Information Detection

Even highly educated people like the Leaders of Tomorrow need to ask themselves how they can actually distinguish real facts from fake information. An open question gave them an opportunity to share how they personally approach this issue.

The most frequent methods mentioned by more than 40% of the respondents are checking the reference and/or comparing multiple sources respectively. The third most popular method, stated by 27% of respondents, is to rely only on trustworthy, official, reputable sources such as scientific magazines, newspapers, state channels, etc. In other words, solely reports from trusted media sources are read or at least taken seriously. This method may seem too simple at first glance.

Ultimately, however, the question arises as to whether it is even possible to check the primary data sources in each and every domain. Discussing and verifying information with other people (e.g., experts, friends) or using their common sense and life experience as well as critical and logical thinking is stated by about 15%. Nearly 10% check whether the content is sponsored (and therefore potentially biased), or look out for characteristics like tone of messaging, sensation, grammar, etc. On average, respondents who answered the question use two different methods to protect themselves against fake news. Whether these measures are sufficient to prevent people from being stuck inside their own filter bubbles, however, is debatable.

Read the full Voices of the Leaders of Tomorrow Report here for all findings and detailed analysis.