How Narrative Laundering Undermines Critical Thinking

Frequency and consistency are two enemies of our cognitive processing, particularly when it comes to the murky world of disinformation. Our brains are fallible, and trust and perceived truth are two of the areas in which we are most susceptible. It’s for exactly this reason that we’ve seen a recent boom in narrative laundering, a manipulative technique expressly designed to sow confusion and fuel destabilising political agendas.

What is narrative laundering?

Narrative laundering is an emergent disinformation technique that is capitalising on the speed of information transfer through social media. It is employed for mass manipulation, relying on our psychological predispositions to believe what we read, to react emotionally, and to seek credibility through frequency rather than source. In other words, it’s a technique that’s being used to give credibility to disinformation and propaganda campaigns, by making them look ‘trustworthy.'

Narrative laundering has been developed specifically to peddle fake agendas, employing emotive language, fake accounts, and fake news to elicit a specific reaction. It operates a strategy of mass distribution, with fake accounts created and used to flood social media platforms with bogus or doctored content, or content that has a specific political agenda. It’s used to control the overall narrative and legitimise the content, regardless of its basis in fact or truth. There are additional concerns that the advent of open-source AI platforms will further exacerbate the problem, making it easier to automate these processes and increase their volume.

Most recently, we’ve seen narrative laundering successfully employed for the denial of Covid-19, for the denial of climate change, to create a pro-Russian agenda in the conflict with Ukraine, to destabilise economic policy and political elections, and even by cult movements seeking to increase membership. What makes narrative laundering so successful is its use of content with targeted emotional language, output in such volumes that it becomes legitimised purely by its frequency.

Why does it work?

Narrative laundering works because it relies on two of our natural psychological predispositions: truth bias, and the illusory truth effect.

• Truth bias is a phenomenon in which our brains believe truth in others regardless of context, leading us to assume we’re being told the truth, even if we have direct evidence to the contrary.
• The Illusory Truth Effect explains our brain’s predisposition to believing a piece of information, purely based on the frequency of our encounters. The more we see it, the more entrenched it becomes as truth.

What this means is that by default we’ll assume information is true, and the more times we encounter a fact, figure, or opinion, the more entrenched it will become in our own knowledge and beliefs. In many cases, while irritating, these phenomena are largely harmless. Consider the old wives’ tales and superstitions that persist, prompting us to drink more orange juice if we have a cold, or avoid walking under a ladder. These are largely innocuous, certainly not harmful, and, many would argue, even helpful in securing our personal safety. The problem is, not everything we encounter is a well-meaning parable, seeing us engage with information that is at best fake but not deliberate, and at worst a direct manipulation of our thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

Exacerbated by algorithms

As if fake news, fake accounts, and disinformation were not enough, narrative laundering is further fuelled by the exploitation of algorithms and algorithmic rankings. Many of our day-to-day platforms are operated by algorithms (think search engines and social media channels), making the information we encounter more relevant and digestible. While algorithms are used to index content and make it more manageable, they will each have a specific agenda that is relevant to their purpose. For example, on most social media platforms, the directive is ‘engagement,' leading to the promotion of content that is most likely to garner a reaction or result. This boosts performance metrics, but in doing so, down-values aspects such as legitimacy, authority, and source. It means that frequency and popularity can have more influence than the authenticity of a post. Throughout the years, everything from anti-vaccination narratives to far-right propaganda, and conspiracy theories to full-blown hoaxes have been ranked at the top of search engines, despite those platforms’ own efforts to counter their impact.

How can we avoid it?

Put simply, with consciousness, or conscious thinking, more commonly referred to as critical thinking. Critical thinking is the practice of clear and rational thinking, which relies on lateral exploration of content, and pursues the origin or source of the content, to validate its legitimacy. It is time-consuming and requires effort in a way we’re not used to, using reflective, analytical thinking to make a reasonable, rational decision on what to believe or do. It takes constant practise, and has three key tenets:

1. Curiosity and an openness to learn new things and expand our perspective.
2. Willingness to follow the evidence, not the emotion, even if it leads us to conclusions that don’t align with our current thinking.
3. Analysis and the ability to review outcomes in a rational and reasonable manner.

Narrative laundering specifically seeks to undermine our critical-thinking skills, by clouding our judgment, overwhelming our senses, eliciting our most emotional reactions, and of course, masking the origin of the content. It is up to us to continue our practise of critical thinking, to minimise the effect of narrative laundering on our wants, beliefs, and opinions.