“Help! Gran is sharing conspiracy memes on Facebook!” How should we respond to misinformed family members?
New research exploring countering misinformation between family members exposes difficulties such as family hierarchies when seeking to counter misinformation.
“We are all acutely aware of our family, of what they like, of how they act; and this knowledge can be both a blessing and a curse when discussing misinformation”
There’s no silver bullet to countering misinformation. Even taking the wrong approach can also backfire. So what should we do when those we see engaging in, or even re-sharing misinformation also happen to be the closest people we know: Family? It’s one thing to tell a random person online that what they’re sharing is a vaccine conspiracy, but it’s another to tell a family member who you’ll be sharing Christmas dinner with the week after.
Our research exposes the obstacles and frustrations to conducting misinformation conversations with family members. No matter how well-equipped you feel when approaching the conversation, the additional complexity of family dynamics, hierarchies, and networks, should not be understated when countering misinfo.
Why and when do people challenge family members on misinformation?
Our work began through in-depth interviews with 10 people who had experienced misinformation spread within their family before. We sat down with them to find out more about their experiences discussing (or not discussing) their misinformed family members’ beliefs.
We found that people had a number of different reasons for challenging misinformation, some ranging from preventing harm, to preventing their family member from misunderstanding facts. These challenges can take place during normal conversations, intentional chats, and also due to particular triggers (such as a particular event). Sometimes, people don’t feel comfortable discussing misinformation at all, or others beat them to it. Nevertheless, these conversations do happen; but are littered with barriers that can make it much more difficult.
Barriers to challenging family members
We are all acutely aware of our family, of what they like, of how they act; and this knowledge can be both a blessing and a curse when discussing misinformation. Discussing misinformation can often come across as criticism, and the knowledge of how a family member might respond) can be a very off-putting prospect, especially when arguments could be involved. There is a delicate balance between wanting to prevent potentially harmful beliefs, and keeping the peace and fostering healthy relationships with family. This knowledge can also result in us being especially aware of the existing views our family members hold (and then those that will be harder to change!).
Sometimes the environment and types of relationships we have with our family members can also have a detrimental effect on how these conversations occur. For example, in a family that may involve a strict family hierarchy (where there may be a large amount of respect for elders), conversations that challenge those elders’ beliefs are more difficult to have. Conversations about misinformation are very different to those that we would have on a day-to-day basis with our family, and often the communication method where the misinformation spreads (on a digital platform, for example) is not a good communication method to manage these kinds of conversations.
These are all things to consider when you are planning to engage in a discussion to challenge misinformation:
- Will the personality of the person I know make it more difficult?
- Am I prepared for their response?
- What coping mechanisms might I need to deal with such a difficult conversation?
How do people overcome these challenges?
Nevertheless, we prevail! And we approach our family members armed with what we consider to be the correct information to rise to the challenge (pun intended). We found that our challengers approached the conversation with a set of resources they had collated, such as websites that they considered to be trustworthy, the opinions of others to form a group narrative, or a person ‘higher up’ in the family (e.g., a parent or a grandparent). Even with these tools, our challengers saw a range of outcomes, including long term negative effects on the relationship between the misinformed and our challenger.
Useful resources participants used included:
- Other people that the misinformed may find more credible
- The testimonies or inputs of other people you know – creating a group narrative
- Evidence – pieces of information that can be used to back up the points you are making
Preparing for these discussions might take some effort; but don’t let it put you off from speaking to your family member. Multiple challengers discussed a positive change in behaviour or views for their family member and, we as family members are the best suited to change the beliefs of our family. They are, after all, the only family we have.
Have you had a similar experience? Share it in the comments! Want to know more? Check out the full research paper at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3544548.3581202
About
Dr Lauren Scott is an Innovation Fellow in the Northumbria Social Computing research group, at Northumbria University Newcastle. Her research explores misinformation, disinformation, fake news and generative AI using a interdisciplinary and human-centred approach.