The lifecycle of a misinformation crisis

The World Economic Forum Global Risk Perception Survey revealed misinformation and disinformation as the number one risk to people over the next two years .

“We’re facing a real crisis now as communicators in our own information ecosystem. How can we actually convey truth to people when truth is often in the eye of the beholder nowadays?” said Dave Fleet, managing director and head of global digital crisis at Edelman, in a presentation at Ragan’s AI Horizons conference.

Here’s a look at how the current misinformation and disinformation landscape is changing due to AI:

Navigating misinformation

Fleet reminded communicators that misinformation-driven crises differ from traditional corporate crises.

These crises follow a typical lifecycle:

“We are in a landscape right now where there is, unfortunately for us, a number of dynamics that are creating a fertile landscape for mis- and disinformation,” said Fleet.

While this process can be entirely created by humans, AI is increasingly being used to automate the process.