Infographics promote misinformation and ‘slacktivism’
Infographics have taken over our Instagram story feeds. Some make use of pastel colors with pink backgrounds and light-green texts. Others employ images and decorative stickers, perhaps a star or two in the corner.
While aesthetically pleasing, these infographics address heavy topics, ranging from the Israel-Palestine conflict to the Taliban in Afghanistan to climate change.
It is hard to resist reposting these, especially with the social capital that accompanies “wokeness” and social awareness. While many mindlessly add these Instagram infographics to their stories to spread awareness of an issue, these actions could also have real and harmful consequences.
Firstly, these infographics contain the potential for misinformation. Whether the person posting the slide has good intentions or not, humans err and Instagram does not monitor its accounts in the same way mainstream news media publications fact-check their work. Yes, users can “flag” certain posts, but in such a dense media ecosystem, the responsibility falls on the user to determine the right facts themselves, which will inevitably promote misinformation.
Infographics have also risen in popularity because they are easy for scrolling users to digest. As communicated by a University of Rochester study, “More than 50 percent of the cortex, the surface of the brain, is devoted to processing visual information.”
By taking the path of least resistance, users are more likely to engage with an infographic than a dense article with cited facts and information. However, they may miss crucial context because the infographic simply does not have room to fully explore the issue in 10 compact slides.
As stated by @BeeBabs or Bolu Babalola, a British author who has been featured on the 2021 Forbes 30 under 30 Europe, on Twitter, “[Infographics] should be launchpads for your own reading/fact-checking.” While many people hold this sentiment, Instagram accounts such as @so.informed, @feminist or @chnge still oversimplify complex issues to promote their accounts and elevate their own political agenda.
@chnge even monetizes activism by selling merchandise while sprinkling advocacy posts in its feed. In the same way that one should not consume partisan media because it lowers trust and increases polarization according to Pew Research, one should not only look at infographics from sources with a clear political leaning.
For example, @so.informed has almost three million Instagram followers. As its name suggests and biography states, this account seeks to inform people so they are more willing to take valuable action.
However, this account is unapologetically partisan. On multiple occasions, it explicitly endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders, both by reposting his tweets and by wishing him a happy birthday. The account even endorsed Nina Turner with the caption, “Nina Turner is running for the 11th House District in Cleveland. Let’s talk and then let’s do all we can to get Nina elected!”
The account raises awareness of many important social issues, from LGBTQ+ rights to mental health issues to gun violence. However, because it openly skews to one side of the political spectrum and condenses complex information, users should independently fact-check posts before reposting and potentially spreading misinformation.
The infographic epidemic has also led to a phenomenon known as “slacktivism.” The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS formally defines this term as an action taken on by “people who support a cause by performing simple measures [but] are not truly engaged or devoted to making a change.”
When someone reposts an infographic, they may feel like an activist by simply clicking “post,” but activism is much more than that. As stated by Cherwell, the student magazine at the University of Oxford, “A side effect of slacktivism is that it has also somewhat glamourised what protesting at the grassroots level looks like. In reality, organizing is a tedious and emotionally exhausting process that requires fighting for basic human rights in a political system that is reluctant to change.”
While there is undeniable value to using social media’s landscape to break down issues for users, we must address the problems that arise with infographics to avoid perpetuating them. It is true that community-centered accounts use infographics to relay valuable information, so how do we ensure that these accounts are not affected negatively by the sea of disinformation perpetuated by other infographics? The solution is research. Every infographic publisher has a responsibility to relay accurate information, and as users, we should openly question where infographics have gotten their facts from, as well as their intentions in the same way we should with media publications.
We must be mindful of the media we consume and repost, all while taking accountability for the errors we make. Slacktivism and lazy reposting will not create change, but actively participating in our communities and in social justice campaigns will.