New research led by George Washington University scholars found that current mitigation efforts to combat distrust online may not be effective because organizations and governments tackling distrust are targeting only one topic and only one geographical scale.
The study, published in “Nature’s Scientific Reports,” showed that online distrust has become a “glocal” phenomenon, meaning it is spreading with different topics lumped together and mixing both local and global interests.
“The key takeaway here is that distrust has gone ‘glocal’ and hence so should mitigation,” said Neil Johnson, one of the study’s authors and a professor of physics at GW’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.
Johnson explained that currently governments, NGOs and other organizations’ attempts at mitigation against distrust have targeted single topics— such as elections, public health, climate change or abortion.
“They are ‘local’ in topic by focusing on just one topic, not a mix,” he said. “And they are either at an international scale, or a national scale or a state scale or a local scale—but again not a mix.”
This silo approach, Johnson said, ignores the fact that “glocal” distrust involves both a range of topics and a variety of geographic scales. For example, people who distrust advice about one topic at the local level (for example, state-level health advice) are also likely to distrust information about topics (such as elections or climate change) at the national and global levels.
“That is what gives distrust its new resilience to mitigations and interventions post-pandemic,” he said.
As distrust has flourished online after the pandemic—and especially as the United States heads into the 2024 presidential election—the researchers said it will become increasingly important for organizations to factor “glocal” biases into their strategies in order to more effectively reach online audiences.