Deception: An Awkward Problem for Political Communication

• In Event: We Won't Get Fooled Again? Misinformation, Deception, & Political Communication

Abstract

In this theoretical and integrative paper, we address what we see as the awkward problem of deception in political communication. We also see this as a longstanding problem for communication research in general; as we will show, cognate social science disciplines, for example psychology and management, are less squeamish. On one hand, the awkwardness is surprising, given that political communication has long been concerned with influence. While power will vary both in its sources and its consequences, understanding how some actors come to hold sway over other actors appears inescapable if we are to assess the production and distribution of politically consequential meaning—and deception will be an inevitable part of such processes. On the other hand, the legacy of debates about “media effects,” the “active audience,” and the crudeness of instrumentalist models of propaganda has nudged researchers away from explanations of deception.

The field currently faces the troubling irony that a great deal of popular and journalistic commentary about media, particularly social media, has placed deception centre-stage. This unsettles some dearly held assumptions of communication researchers and political scientists about “minimal effects.” It also presents challenges to many researchers who have examined the changes wrought by digital media over the last two decades, for whom questions of deception were often (unfairly) dismissed as anachronistic throwbacks to the “mass communication” paradigm. There is a new wave of empirical research on the epistemic vulnerability of publics: disinformation, misinformation, bots, propaganda, algorithms, predictive behavioural advertising. The underlying, if often not explicitly stated, assumption of much of this research is not just that online deception is pervasive, it is also effective: citizens are duped, fooled into believing falsehoods. However, research that explicitly shows how and why online deception works or does not work at the individual level, and the roles played by digital media in these processes, is still surprisingly rare. Social media companies seek technological fixes to the problem of deception.

But there are significant challenges here, most of which, we argue, involve explaining the conditions under which digital media uses—content, technological affordances, social identity, and social practices—may (or may not) shape individuals' attitudes and behaviour in consequential ways. Our paper is therefore a conceptual pause for thought; a thinking through of what influence involving deception might mean today, particularly online, and of what the broader implications for authenticity, rationality, tolerance, and trust in politics might be. We address four main questions: 1. What does existing literature from across the social sciences say about why people are directly deceived in interpersonal settings? 2. What does this literature say about why people are indirectly deceived by information that is introduced by deceivers in public fora, which is, after all, the essence of most online political deception? 3. Are certain types or groups of people more likely to be deceived? And finally, 4. What is useful, and what is not so useful, in the broader social science literature about deception, for political communication researchers in the current context?

We will address these questions through a critical review of existing research from different disciplines. A risk-diminishing ‘truth bias’ underpins much human communication in general (Buller and Burgoon, 1996; Carson, 2010; Galasinski, 2000; Hancock, 2007). Political science and political communication have not been overly concerned with issues of deception although there has been some research on campaign advertising (Winneg et al, 2014), in international relations (Godson and Wirtz, 2000), and information warfare (Hutchinson, 2006). Research in other disciplines has provided insights into why people are deceived. The psychological concept of gullibility—another awkward idea—has played a role in making sense of the effectiveness of deception. Some studies conceptualize gullibility it as a psychological condition of excessive trust. Others examine personality types, cognitive capacity, and the kinds of social groups that are likely have strong beliefs or become especially vulnerable due to their economic position, age, or gender, for example. Intriguingly, some draw attention to the specific actions and personal attributes of a deceiver in winning the trust and lowering the suspicion of individuals. In this paradigm, which emphasises the agency of the deceiver, *all* individuals are potentially vulnerable.

With the growth of online deception in the political sphere, a critical review is needed to highlight what is known in political communication and other fields. Through this, can we overcome the awkward problem of influence by deception and move research forward conceptually.

Authors

• Andrew Chadwick, Loughborough University

• James Stanyer, Loughborough University