Four Steps to Getting Better Political and Election News

Authenticating Information

  1. Broaden your news diet. Probably the most important thing you can do is make sure that you’re not only getting news that confirms what you already believe. At the same time, it’s important not to “overcorrect” and seek out sources that have a totally opposite bias from yours, which will almost certainly just make you angry and reinforce your current opinions. Instead, find sources from a more moderate, different point of view. 

    Another option is to go directly to wire services such as Reuters, The Canadian Press or Associated Press, or to use a news aggregator such as AllSides that provides summaries and links to stories from across the spectrum. It’s also valuable to find sources that reflect an entirely different spectrum, such as newspapers in other countries: though they too will have their biases, because they’re in such a different context you may find them less likely to trigger your feelings of loyalty to your side.[1]

    It’s important to remember that news that comes to you through search engines and social networks has already been filtered. Some of this filtering is based on how these platforms evaluate overall relevance (for example, they may provide more news about a candidate who is already receiving more mentions in the news, either because they are leading in the polls or because they say controversial things)[2] or, as noted above, sometimes the filtering can be manipulated by disinformation agents.

    What’s probably most significant, though, is that both search engines and social networks are designed to deliver what’s most relevant to you – which in the case of news means information that you already agree with.[3] For example, researchers found that YouTube users who were skeptical about the legitimacy of the 2020 US election were three times as likely to be recommended videos making claims about election fraud.[4] The best way to avoid this is to limit the ways in which search engines and social networks collect data about you, so that they’re less able to build a profile. To do this, you can:
     

    • Make a habit of using Incognito or Private Browsing mode in your browser.
    • If you have a Google account, go to My Google Activity and make sure Web & App Activity, Timeline and YouTube History are turned off.
    • Change your settings to limit tracking in browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge.
    • If you use an iOS device, limit tracking by going to Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Tracking, and turning off the toggle Allow Apps to Request to Track.
    • Use a non-tracking search engine such as DuckDuckGo.
    • Install a blocking plugin such as PrivacyBadger or a blocking app like DuckDuckGo or Blokada.
    • Set the ad tracking and feed preferences in your social network and search engine accounts to not deliver customized content.

    Interacting with a broader range of sources will also help reduce how heavily your feeds and recommendations are filtered.

    Keep in mind that the purpose of broadening your news diet is to challenge your own biases; as NPR’s Brooke Gladstone puts it, “That’s the hardest thing – to bring into the conversation stuff that you might find challenging that might take you aback.”[5] What may be most important is not getting more facts but developing more empathy for those who hold different views: people who are antagonistic to others and see the world as dangerous are most likely to believe in conspiracy theories.[6]

  2. Make fact-checking a habit. General-purpose tools like search engines[7] and chatbots[8] do not reliably provide accurate information about elections. Our section on Verifying online news has detailed information on how to fact-check news in general, but there are a few things that are particularly relevant to political and election news:
    • First, go straight to election authorities to confirm or debunk information about the voting process. Elections Canada operates the ElectoFacts website, which provides easy-to-access information about topics like special ballots, voting technology, and campaign financing; several provincial elections authorities operate similar sites.
    • Second, draw on fact-checking sites such as Snopes and Politifact to save you the trouble of debunking other false stories about politics.
    • Third, turn to general-purpose sources such as encyclopedias or librarians to help you get a good grounding in the subject. This can be a good way to learn the different terms and imagery that different sides of an issue use so you can more easily recognize where a source is coming from. (Keep in mind that like any other source, encyclopedia articles need to be viewed critically. For user-created encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, look for warning banners that suggest there are major problems with a page and check the “Talk” tab to see the article’s rating.)
    • Fourth, don’t pay too much attention to anecdotes and analogies: both of those are valuable ways to illustrate a story, but don’t prove
    • Finally, when a claim is made about a politician or political party, go to the source. If the Pope were actually to endorse a particular candidate, for example, you can be sure that the endorsement would be on that candidate’s website! (Make sure you’ve navigated to the real site, though, rather than following links that might lead you to a spoof site.) To really understand where a candidate stands on issues, watch televised all-candidate debates and “take it offline” by attending debates in your riding, visiting the campaign office or talking to a campaigner canvassing your neighbourhood to ensure what you read about a candidate is actually true.
       
  3. Be responsible when sharing and discussing news online. Don’t make the problem worse by sharing stories that you’re not certain of (nearly a quarter of Americans have shared fake news online)[9] and be respectful when you talk about politics. In 2016, more people said they were harassed online because of their political views than almost any other reason, ahead of sex, race, religion and sexual orientation,[10] a situation which can only lead to our communities and our news environment becoming more fractured and polarized.
     
  4. Complain about false news and disinformation when you see it. Despite improvements in tools to automatically filter out disinformation, online platforms still rely on users to report when things go wrong. This can be particularly important during an election or in the wake of a major news event, when platforms can be flooded with disinformation, or when the disinformation is not sufficiently widespread to have been corrected. Most social networks, along with YouTube, have options for reporting individual posts, while Google has a general “Send feedback” button at the bottom of each page of search results and also allows you to report inappropriate autocorrect predictions (a small grey link at the bottom of the suggestions window that says “Report inappropriate predictions”). Reporting can have a significant effect: the deplatforming of accounts that spread disinformation was associated with less impact on the US elections of 2022 than 2020.[11]

    If reporting disinformation doesn’t lead the platform to remove it, consider complaining about it to companies who advertise on it. Nearly all search engines and social networks earn their revenue from advertising, and many of the major changes they’ve made in how they do business have been the result of pressure from advertisers – who have themselves usually been responding to consumer pressure.[12]

[1] Stray, J. (2012) “How Do You Tell When the News is Biased? It Depends on How You See Yourself.” Nieman Lab.

[2] Diakopoulos, N. (2012) Understanding bias in computational news media. Nieman Lab.

[3] Unger, W. (2020). How the poor data privacy regime contributes to misinformation spread and democratic erosion. Colum. Sci. & Tech. L. Rev., 22, 308.

[4] Bisbee, J., Brown, M., Lai, A., Bonneau, R., Tucker, J. A., & Nagler, J. (2022). Election fraud, YouTube, and public perception of the legitimacy of President Biden. Journal of Online Trust and Safety, 1(3).

[5] Pitts, R. (2017) 5 Steps to Improve Your Media Literacy. Teen Vogue.

[6] Bowes, S. M., Costello, T. H., & Tasimi, A. (2023). The conspiratorial mind: A meta-analytic review of motivational and personological correlates. Psychological Bulletin.

[7] Albert, S., Getachew Y., Littlewood J., Rotman B., Ryan P., Steiner E., & Walter J. (2021) As a Matter of Fact: The Harms Caused by Election Disinformation. Common Cause.

[8] Simon, F., Fletcher, R., & Nielsen R.K. (2024) How AI chatbots responded to questions about the 2024 UK election. Reuters Institute.

[9] Pitts, Rebecca. “5 Steps to Improve Your Media Literacy.” Teen Vogue, April 26, 2017.

[10] Dewey, Caitlin. “The most compelling reason to never talk politics on Facebook.” The Washington Post, August 4, 2016.

[11] Gold, A., & Fischer S. (2022) Why misinformation didn’t wreck the midterms. Axios.

[12] “A Brave New World: How the Internet Affects Societies.” Chatham House, May 11, 2017.