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Dealing with Disinformation

Don’t practise winning the argument.

Practise building shared understanding — to keep each other safe.

Disinformation is not going away. If anything, an AI-driven information environment is making it easier to produce, personalise and spread convincing information at scale.

We cannot make safety depend on people meeting us free from disinformation.

But once we meet, we have something the information environment does not: interpersonal communication.

We can ask. Listen. Question. Check. Clarify. Correct each other. Work through uncertainty together. Understand what surrounds our interaction. Adapt to one another's needs as we go.

Disinformation is created through communication. So communication is also the path to its repair.

SACCIA gives us the capability to use our interpersonal space as a safety mechanism.

START WITH A REAL CHALLENGE

Think of one piece of disinformation you regularly encounter.

Not a hypothetical example. Choose something someone has actually said to you — a claim, belief or source of information that made safe communication difficult.

Now imagine the person saying it to you.

Don’t read ahead yet. Write down the first thing you would actually say in response.

Now look at your response. Did you want to correct the information? That makes sense. Disinformation immediately draws our attention to Accuracy: Is it true? Is it false? What does the evidence say? How do I correct it? Accuracy matters. But Accuracy is only one of five communicative competencies involved in building shared understanding. Giving someone accurate information does not guarantee that the two of you understand each other. You don’t have to agree with each other. But you do need to understand each other. That is where interpersonal communication can unfold its potential for safety. Disagreement divides. Shared understanding unites. SACCIA gives us the communicative capability to get there.
S
SUFFICIENCY

Complete the picture together.

You have information. The other person has information.

Until you bring that information into the interaction, you are working with two separate pictures.

Disinformation often works with fragments: one frightening risk, one personal experience, one study or one dramatic claim detached from everything around it.

The reflex to correct can make us add another fragment before we even know what picture the other person is seeing.

First find out what is already there.

What has this person heard? What have they understood from it? What concerns them? What are they basing their conclusion on?

And don’t forget the other direction: What might they know that you don’t?

You do not have to agree with everything that enters the conversation.

But you cannot build shared understanding from relevant information that never enters the space between you.

What could you say that would help both of you put more of the relevant picture on the table?

A
ACCURACY

Don’t compete over who is right. Corroborate together.

This is where disinformation naturally pulls us: Who is right? Who is wrong?

But interpersonal communication gives us something more useful than a competition between two claims.

It allows us to check each other — and can protect us from harmful mistakes.

A claim can be questioned. A source can be examined. An assumption can be challenged. A contradiction can become visible. A mistake can be corrected.

And Accuracy is not only about whether the information is correct.

It is also about whether I have understood you correctly — and you have understood me correctly.

You may discover that the other person misunderstood the evidence. You may discover that they misunderstood you.

And you may discover that you misunderstood them.

Accuracy therefore does not belong to one person in the interaction.

The interaction gives both of you the opportunity to become more accurate.

How could you put what both of you think you know into the conversation so that it can actually be checked?

C
CLARITY

Bring uncertainty into the conversation.

Certainty is comfortable.

When people are frightened, overwhelmed or simply exhausted by uncertainty, a confident answer can be enormously attractive.

Disinformation can exploit that.

The complex risks we face often do not allow for that same certainty.

But the answer is not to compete with false certainty by manufacturing certainty of our own.

And it is not to leave the other person alone with: “We just don’t know.”

Interpersonal communication gives us another possibility: we can talk our way through uncertainty together.

What do we know? How confidently do we know it? What remains uncertain? What could different possibilities mean? And what can we safely do despite what we do not yet know?

Uncertainty does not have to disappear before shared understanding becomes possible.

It has to become understandable.

How would you talk about what remains uncertain rather than retreating to a more comfortable sense of certainty?

C
CONTEXTUALISATION

Notice what surrounds your interaction.

The person you are facing is not the misinformation.

Nobody walks into an encounter as an empty container for information.

The person in front of you brings experiences, fears, values, relationships, people they trust, stories they have heard, information they have found, expectations, goals and cultural beliefs.

You bring that context too.

And there is a context around the interaction itself: your roles, professional authority, the physical environment, time pressure, previous encounters and whatever trust or distrust already exists between you.

Think of the interaction as sitting inside all of those surrounding layers.

They affect what can be heard. They affect how information is interpreted. And they can make shared understanding easier — or more difficult.

Ignoring that context works against our ability to establish shared understanding.

But context does not only create barriers. It can also give us something to work with.

We can discover what is getting in the way. And we can find what is already there that might help us understand each other better.

What might surround this interaction that makes the same information mean something different to the two of you?

IA
INTERPERSONAL ADAPTATION

Notice what happens to the person as you communicate with one another.

Information is rarely just information to the person receiving it.

It can be a matter of heart.

People have different cognitive needs. Different linguistic needs. Different emotional needs.

They may need different words. A different pace. More explanation. Less information at once. More evidence. Or a moment in which you simply stop talking.

And what they need can change while you are communicating.

That means safe communication requires more than preparing the right explanation.

It requires noticing what your communication is doing as it happens.

If you see confusion, do you keep explaining?

If you see fear, do you add another statistic?

If the person withdraws, do you finish what you had planned to say?

Or do you notice that something has changed, find out what is happening — and change what you are doing to ensure shared understanding?

That is Interpersonal Adaptation.

What would tell you that your communication is no longer working for the person in front of you? What would you try to do?

NOW GO BACK

Same person. Same disinformation.

At the beginning, you wrote down what you would instinctively say.

Don’t look at it yet.

Imagine the person sitting in front of you again.

But this time, Accuracy is not alone.

It works together with Sufficiency, Clarity, Contextualisation and Interpersonal Adaptation.

You may still disagree. But now you have five communicative capabilities for building the shared understanding you need to move forward safely.

You know that there may be information missing from the picture. You know that both people’s understanding can be wrong. You know that uncertainty needs to become understandable. You know that the interaction is surrounded by a context that can help or hinder you. And you know that communication has to respond to the person as the interaction unfolds.

NOW COMPARE. Look at the response you wrote at the beginning. Then look at what you just wrote.

Don’t ask whether your second response sounds nicer.

Ask something more important: Did you move from correcting information toward building shared understanding?

NOW PRACTISE IT

Two people. One difficult claim. Five competencies.

PERSON A

Play yourself.

Use the same difficult claim. Don’t perform SACCIA. Have the conversation.

PERSON B

Play the other person.

Don’t make it easy. Believe what you’re saying. Ask questions. Disagree. Be uncertain. Be worried. Distrust the evidence if that is what this person would realistically do.

TIME

3–5 minutes.

Then stop before you discuss what happened.

REFLECT

Where did shared understanding become easier — and where did it become harder?

S — SUFFICIENCY

Was enough of the relevant picture actually between us?

A — ACCURACY

Did we make our information and our understanding correctable?

C — CLARITY

Did uncertainty become more understandable?

C — CONTEXTUALISATION

What around or between us helped or hindered shared understanding?

IA — INTERPERSONAL ADAPTATION

Did we notice what was happening to the other person and adapt as we went?

Now switch roles.

THE REAL TEST

The real test comes in your next conversation.

When someone tells you something you believe is wrong, notice what happens in you.

You will probably still want to correct it.

Accuracy matters.

Just remember: Accuracy is not alone. There is another person in front of you. There is you. And there is the interpersonal space between you. Use it.

You do not have to agree.

But you can use communication to understand each other more accurately, make uncertainty discussable, work with the context around you and adapt to one another as you go.

Disagreement divides. Shared understanding unites. SACCIA gives us the communicative capability to get there.
USE THE POWER OF INTERACTION.

Use the space between you as an opportunity for safety.

COMPLETE. CORROBORATE. CLARIFY. CONTEXTUALISE. ADAPT.

Use SACCIA.
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© Prof. Annegret Hannawa