INTERVIEW
Drilling into truth decay
When RAND Corporation published its 2018 report Truth Decay in the US, Barack Obama put it on his summer reading list. In 2022 RAND pub- lished Truth Decay in Europe. Here one of its authors, Stijn Hoorens, a keynote speaker at CILIP Conference 2024, discusses what truth decay looks like across Europe and in the UK, where he says libraries are “an essential part of the solution”. Book your place at CILIP Conference at
www.cilipconference.org.uk.
THE potential for truth decay to damage society can range from not being able to talk to neighbours or family about particu- lar issues through to statistics agencies, universities and health agencies no longer being trusted. So, it should be useful to know how bad truth decay is at a local level.
Ahead of his keynote speech at CILIP Con- ference 2024 Stijn Hoorens, Office Director of RAND Europe, Netherlands and Senior Research Leader, spoke to Information Profes- sional about the state of truth decay in Europe, the UK and the role of libraries and librarians in addressing the problem.
Exacerbated or exaggerated? Asked if the findings of the Truth Decay in Europe report, published in 2022, were affected by post pandemic financial upheaval and the war in Ukraine, Stijn said the report “concluded that truth decay is occurring, but not to the same extent as it in the US. There is evidence in Europe of an increasing disagreement about facts and data; a blurring of the line between opinion and fact; an increasing relative volume and resulting influence of opinion over fact; and a decline in trust in traditional sources of information. But there is a lot of diversity across countries, which suggests that there is still time to slow down or counter the problem in Europe.”
He added that while “most of the research and data we considered for our report stem from before the pandemic, the information
24 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Rob MacKinlay (
rob.mackinlay@
cilip.org.uk) is a journalist at Information Professional
wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the hesitancy against the COVID vaccine and increasing popularity of conspiracy theories suggest the phenomenon has been exacerbated in Europe since publication of the report. Although much of this is anecdotal, there is certainly some empirical evidence supporting this. “But we should bear in mind that what we read in the news or see on social media, is not necessarily representative of the entire popula- tion. Relatively small minorities of very active and vocal individuals often dominate online debates.”
Less danger than the US
The report suggests Europe and the UK do not suffer from the same level of the truth decay as the US and have some cultural or institutional safety nets, according to Stijn: “Europe is probably equally exposed to the risks posed by
June 2024
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