Fighting Disinformation: Current Approaches Fall Short

Australian researchers are calling for a fundamental shift in the approach to combating disinformation, arguing that current regulatory efforts are missing the mark by focusing too narrowly on content moderation and fact-checking.

The RECapture research team, which monitors how false information flows across social media and affects Australian democratic processes, suggests that treating disinformation simply as “content” that needs correction is both unproductive and unnecessarily limiting.

“We need to look beyond individual pieces of content and examine the broader system that creates and amplifies disinformation,” said a spokesperson from the research initiative. “Fact-checking alone isn’t solving the problem, and may actually be diverting resources from more effective interventions.”

The team has been tracking disinformation as it spreads across both Chinese and American social media platforms, including WeChat, RedNote, and YouTube. Their work reveals complex patterns of information flow that cross linguistic, cultural, and platform boundaries – demonstrating that disinformation is not merely a content issue but a systemic one.

This perspective represents a significant departure from current regulatory frameworks, which often place responsibility on platforms to remove harmful content or employ third-party fact-checkers to label false information. While these approaches have become standard practice globally, the RECapture team suggests they may be addressing symptoms rather than causes.

Australia’s electoral integrity has increasingly come under threat from coordinated disinformation campaigns in recent years. During the last federal election, researchers documented numerous instances of false narratives targeting specific demographics and swing electorates, often spreading unchecked through closed messaging groups and non-English language communities.

Media analysts point out that the challenge is particularly acute on platforms like WeChat, which serves as a primary information source for many Chinese-Australian voters but operates largely outside the regulatory scrutiny applied to mainstream social media companies.

“There’s a significant blind spot in our current approach,” noted a digital media expert familiar with the research. “By the time fact-checkers identify and address false content, it has often already achieved its purpose and moved on to new variations of the same narrative.”

The RECapture team recommends that regulators instead focus on the structural factors that enable disinformation to flourish: algorithmic amplification systems, economic incentives for content creators, data harvesting practices, and cross-platform information flows.

This approach would require collaboration between government agencies, technology companies, and civil society to develop new frameworks that address the ecosystem rather than individual content pieces. It would also necessitate greater transparency from platforms about how their recommendation systems work and how information spreads across their networks.

International experts have increasingly supported this system-based approach. The European Union’s Digital Services Act has begun moving in this direction by requiring large platforms to assess and mitigate systemic risks, including those related to electoral processes and public health.

The timing of this research is particularly relevant as Australia prepares for upcoming state elections and continues to refine its approach to digital platform regulation through the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

Electoral commissions across Australia have expressed growing concern about their limited ability to counter false information during tight campaign periods, particularly when it spreads through encrypted channels or platforms based outside Australian jurisdiction.

The researchers emphasize that addressing disinformation as a systems problem doesn’t mean abandoning fact-checking entirely, but rather incorporating it into a more comprehensive strategy that tackles the underlying technological, economic, and social dynamics that make disinformation campaigns effective.

As social media platforms continue to evolve and new technologies like artificial intelligence make sophisticated manipulation easier, the RECapture team’s findings suggest that Australia’s approach to safeguarding information integrity needs to evolve as well – moving beyond content moderation toward a deeper understanding of how disinformation functions within our media ecosystem.