Our health in an era of fake news and conspiracy theories. Episode 51

Monika Rachtan
Hi, this is Monika Rachtan and the programme 'Patient First'. Well-crafted fake news in my opinion can cause a war. And what can it do in the health care system? This is what I am going to talk about today with my guest and yours, Maia Mazurkiewicz. Hi, a warm welcome to you. You are an expert on combating disinformation. Today we are going to talk about that.

Maja Mazurkiewicz
I agree. I am very happy that we are and will be talking in the context of health.

Monika Rachtan
When you observe health-related media communication, how often do you notice fake news there?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
If we look at what happened in the pandemic, we see it very often. Disinformation has been around for a long time, as far back as the Roman Empire. In the political context or people's general understanding of what disinformation is, it became more important in the health context, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Monika Rachtan
It's very interesting what you said. An actor who deals in disinformation. Explain to me why such a person exists? What are his goals and what can he do?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
Disinformation is a deliberate action to influence people negatively. This can be used by various people, so-called actors, external or internal, including political parties or, in Poland, Russia. In the information sphere, we find both disinformation, which is a deliberate action, and information, which can be misleading.

Monika Rachtan
Well, yes, but why is fake news being spread in the health field?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
Disinformation actors use our vulnerabilities. Research from 2024 showed that almost 50% Poles are most afraid of their health.

Monika Rachtan
This is clear.

Maja Mazurkiewicz
Immediately following in second place is the health of loved ones. These are clearly our vulnerabilities. Disinformation actors can use them to destabilise society, to introduce more fear. Therefore, health is a weak point.

Monika Rachtan
And it probably has some action in store afterwards that it wants to do again. We are doing all this for something. We have to learn to gain some kind of awareness that this is a purposeful action, that it then has an effect, an outcome, right?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
That's exactly right. And it's really all about that, our feelings, our emotions, and it's those negative emotions that have the most impact. One of these most negative emotions that we see is the fear that we feel and we don't know how to deal with it. Because Polish society doesn't actually have, and certainly hasn't been. Now there is more and more emotional education, which means that from an early age we don't know how to deal with our emotions. These emotions are smaller, we can't take a breath and think about what's going on, we just get caught up in these emotions, we react to them straight away And this is how our brain and our brain works. It's structured in such a way that if we are afraid, we shut down and tunnel thinking comes in.

Monika Rachtan
What does this mean?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
So, for example, normally how does our mind work? It works in such a way that we can look at different opinions, we look for different comments, information, proven media. We check things out. Whereas how we get scared. It's this tunnel thinking that comes in, which is very psychological and makes our brain go. We go into this kind of context, which is freezing, fleeing mainly or fighting. And that's something that we as humans in general have been going into since prehistoric times and so it has an impact. So the more there's this kind of information that's attacking us and we're afraid of, the more we're going to go into this tunnel thinking. And the more such an actor with disinformation will be able to manipulate and influence us. So, for example, especially as we are now in a period of intensive election campaigning, well, as it has been for a few months now in Poland, by the way, this year is such a mega-election year all over the world, well, all the more so. This is one of the things that various actors, such as Russia, can use to influence the outcome of elections.

Monika Rachtan
And above all, I think it's important to explain to our audiences that this whole process that you've just talked about, he is very well known by the actors. They know it step by step, they know how we will react in a given situation. Nothing is random here. It is all, as I said before, a very tightly planned action. And it is probably this action that we should be afraid of, not this information.

Maja Mazurkiewicz
That's exactly right. You're very well prepared, because that's the thing, we very often people who even go out in the media and communicate, in fact everyone communicates, we have at the moment we're living in the age of social media, so everything can be passed on passing on information to each other and so on. There are actors of disinformation who use this, perfectly, they know these vulnerabilities of ours because they've either done the research or they've followed these things very well. A lot of these things are just human. That is, it is known that the us versus them narrative works very well, so it is often used. It is known that security is human and people tend to be afraid of change and afraid of losing control. This is so standard everywhere, and in addition there are also different things that work against us depending on the country, region and so on. And exactly as you say these narratives are tested, they are tried, they are released and they work to make us afraid. So if the first thing we see on social media or wherever is that this kind of information affects us in such a way that we're afraid, that we're angry, that we have negative emotions coming out, then you have to stop.

Monika Rachtan
And reflect.

Maja Mazurkiewicz
Consider. Preferably at the beginning. I always say it's that kind of emotion. Just take a few breaths at the beginning and then analyse and see if it's true. And definitely on such emotions don't pass on.

Monika Rachtan
Did they say that Poles are most afraid for their health, for their life? What are your observations? What are your experiences? Where do you find this health information most often?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
We look for everything. Mostly I look on social media, or there on google and generally if it's not like misinformation is coming out of nowhere too. We talked about these weak points. Of course, the weak point in Poland is health care and getting to a doctor, that is, there is no place at the doctor's. I look to Dr Google for advice on how to cure. Colds, ear, etc. That's still pal six, but I even remember myself having a test a few years ago, I typed in this test and of course you have cancer. And that's exactly it. Of course, it turned out to be nothing to do with it at all. Completely. Now, of course, all cancer can be cured, whereas you understand completely. It wasn't even serious. Just a problem. On the other hand, of course, as a human being, I was a bit concerned when I saw something like that on google, somewhere in the comments, which was supposedly commented on by a doctor. So of course I started to believe at least a little and went to the doctor. It turned out that it wasn't. So it's not worth checking a lot of things on social media. And secondly, if we do check, let's really check in places that are verified and where we can trust and believe. And also there's a saying to people who are involved in this health care, who are doctors, or who run different podcasts or websites, to communicate it better and give that space to people. Well, because one thing is, of course, that this health service needs to improve and I hope that somewhere in there will be that improvement.

Maja Mazurkiewicz
And the other side of it is just how to communicate to the patient. Because if patients actually need some reassurance, because they feel insecure, unsafe, afraid of what's going on, they're going to look for that social media. So let's also give them the opportunity to find sound knowledge and reliable knowledge.

Monika Rachtan
Health is also a sensitive subject, because, as you said today, doctors are not always able to communicate well with patients and the public, but nobody taught them this at school. Very often, doctors come and say: 'Editor', 'Monika', but we don't tell the students how to talk to the patient. So then this doctor, frustrated, tired, overworked, he just goes. Another, another, another and another. And he doesn't think about that message at all. So this responsibility is really on many levels here, and a great deal needs to change to teach doctors to talk about health in such a way that someone wants to listen to them. Because the fact that they speak is one thing, and the fact that we don't understand it is another issue.

Maja Mazurkiewicz
I very much agree. My mission is to change the way we communicate. And this is not just about social media or the media we were talking about. To come with a simple message and understandable to people, but just that communication between us, because a doctor like that, if they're busy, tired, it all works on our emotions as well. So if we're having a bad day, we often communicate that bad day to the other person and that's what the doctor or non-doctor does. So it also affects our mental health. As much as possible I think that such training or such education in general too. There should be more in medical universities.

Monika Rachtan
To take some responsibility for education into the programme. First of all, the patient. A few episodes ago, I invited a communication expert, Mr Zbigniew Kowalski, just patient, doctor, doctor, patient. So if you would like to refresh yourselves, or if you haven't had the opportunity to watch or listen to it, I would like to invite you to this episode, and I recommend it to you, because you can learn about communication between the patient and the doctor. And tell me, when you observe such an average user of social media on the Internet, do you have the impression that this person, when searching for any information at all, thinks about the source of this information that we have? That's how you know in your head. Who wrote it? Who said it? Who is the man who advised me not to vaccinate against covid19 because I would get a stroke? Or who is the man who tells me that for cancer I should pour myself 1,000 litres of vitamin C a day?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
I think, as a rule, we don't think about it, because these are our emotions. If we are afraid and we come with this advice, because of the fear, we even look at the fact that it was said by a doctor, because most often there are also manipulative techniques used, that very often these sources are similar to sources on the internet.

Monika Rachtan
Well, does a doctor on the internet really have to be a doctor?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
Of course not. There are very interesting cases which are investigated by the fact that, for example, Russia and precisely various Russian services create such doctors. Such ladies, too, very often, who are supposedly there as people from such alternative medicine and all this is created as some kind of entity, and then, all of a sudden, various topics which arouse even more fear or uncertainty in the context, in the context of various activities are raised, and what has the greatest, most important impact is our trust, because we Poles again and Polish women have one of the lowest, the lowest percentage of trust in relation to various authorities. And here I am talking about politicians, of course, but also doctors and other things in the context of the region or Europe.

Monika Rachtan
But are you talking about this kind of direct communication, that is, when I sit with the doctor at the desk, the table, I don't trust him? Are you talking about that message that the doctor sends to me on the internet, that.

Maja Mazurkiewicz
What I am saying in general is that we don't trust much at all and prefer to look on the internet, not that this is how it works. Disinformation and also disinformation makes this trust even less. So very often, if, for example, a politician speaks to us from such a source, well, we don't trust him. If something is said by the police, we don't trust them and so on. So in that respect, we need to find places that we trust and a doctor like that. Just such a 1-on-1 action is where we trust the most. And here we also trust our family members very much, for example, or friends, pharmacists, but also, well, that's how the context of communication works. As Goebbels once said, a lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth. It is now, in the context of our social media and new technologies, that we only need to hear a thing 3 times and we start to believe it. That is to say, we'll watch something on YouTube and then we'll hear it in a restaurant, without even talking to the person, just from the sidelines, because then we'll go to our aunt's for our name day and our aunt will tell us something and we'll believe her.

Maja Mazurkiewicz
And it works the same way with this, with this I will do. So if we don't have confidence in authorities, that is, just to find different things, we are afraid, or we are not even sure, as was the case with Pandemic, for example, there was communication and not only in Poland, but everywhere. You didn't know what was going on. Nobody knew, politicians didn't know, they didn't know. Governments did not know, experts did not know, doctors did not know.

Monika Rachtan
It's such a great time for these actors to release information.

Maja Mazurkiewicz
Such a person was insecure. His friends, acquaintances and often family members were dying and one had to look for culprits and alternative sources of information.

Monika Rachtan
It's hard to prepare for a situation like Pandemic, but you're the expert on preventing disinformation and spreading disinformation. Tell me, what did you do in Pandemic covid 19 when you saw that there was so much of this news? What actions were they taking?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
We tried to do positive communication, which is to say just to act on the fear that was there. So in general, in terms of the experts who were involved, there was monitoring and checking what the downside was, what the disinformation was, what was being released, checking the actors, because disinformation is also about being divided into two parts, That is, on the one hand it's the different narratives that are being released, and on the other hand it's the tools, the tactics, the techniques, the procedures that are being used on the internet and beyond. And they lead to such influence operations in general. That is to say, analysts who are already involved in cyber security are sitting down and looking at what's going on, who's releasing it and whether there's any attempt at such deeper manipulation by influence operations, which affects the stability of society and trust. And on the other hand, I think that this positive communication is very important, because if we have most of the information on the internet that is negative or false, the person looking for this information will believe it and see it and react.

Monika Rachtan
In an emotional way. I immediately wanted to explain to our viewers, and maybe to tell you about it too, that in the programme Patient First. When we were thinking about how this programme should look like, our basic aim was that the expert should sit opposite me and that he should be visible, so that I could check on the Internet whether Mr Professor, let's say Jan Kowalski, is really such a professor. Now tell me, where on the Internet can I find such reliable information? Exactly, if a doctor tells me that infusions, ointments and other things should be given, can I check whether he really is this doctor? Are there places like that on the internet? Do you think it can be verified?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
Well, that is it. That is a very good question. We may know each other. There certainly is. A doctor gets proper, proper training, also the qualifications, there is a medical board, so of course you can check such things. Whereas, again, very often, if we say, for example, doctor, there is a doctor, but not exactly a doctor of medicine, right? This is a very common procedure, a very common procedure. Or also looking at doctors, because it's also worth saying that. Not all doctors, of course, have a similar approach, or maybe they are doctors, and then they can be used, or spread misinformation, for example. So it's also very important to check that. And in the context of the internet, I would actually check more on the subject and the topic that this doctor is giving and talking about and check if for example it's a verified account or not. Which you can do on most on most social networks, which is to see if it's actually a verified account and how many people are behind it, if there are any other links to it and where it's still present at all. Well, because I wouldn't say that everyone now necessarily has to search for it either, would they? Because we are not in a position to do that, to check that every person who speaks to us on the internet is definitely who they say they are, because many people are not on ICSI. It's a very high percentage of fake accounts somewhere that are hitting up different topics.

Maja Mazurkiewicz
And also when it comes to combating disinformation, what we have now, and what is our challenge, is that we get as much information in one day as our ancestors got in a lifetime on average. Exactly, we are not able to verify that. That's why it's really our mental health. And that inhale and exhale is the most important thing, because misinformation works in such a way that it just works on those emotions. Are you thinking.

Monika Rachtan
That a person who comes across so much of this professional news can collapse in mental health because of what he reads, what he watches, what the world communicates to him? Do you observe such phenomena?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
Of course it is. The fear is. All this fake news. Is disinformation having an effect on making us afraid? And there are studies that clearly say that the more we are afraid, the more stressed we are, the worse our lives, our health gets. There are a number of somatic illnesses and generally mental health and normal health can suffer too. It's also in terms of how we talk to ourselves, what we notice, how we attach ourselves to what we say and how we look at the internet, what we verify, or do we just sit and scan the algorithms that Facebook, Instagram or tic tac to us? Rather, we have vetted, verified accounts out there that we can trust. And that's what we go in and check and talk to the doctor. Because that's obviously always the most important thing. And to myself.

Monika Rachtan
I think this weekend without a phone is actually very healthy and worth doing for yourself. I guess the answer to those mental health issues, because we're a bit hard on ourselves from those phones, from that social media, especially if you're doing a job that requires it, for example. In Pandemic, the fake news affected you the most, which one do you remember. Anything come to mind?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
But I think the thing that was talked about the most was that about vaccines, that different vaccines cause different diseases, they don't work and so on. And there was a lot of that. Although there was also the kind of fake news that was seen in Warsaw and in various other countries, talking about this or that cities, that the city would be closed in a while. So run away or leave. So all of that had an even stronger effect on this fear of ours, and unfortunately it also works in such a way that the media fuels this fear. Well, because of course it is necessary to communicate and talk about topics that are related to our security. Whereas if we as a human being, as you say, sit and watch non-stop this social media or media and see it fueling more and more, the worse it will be for us. And to what you said about having a weekend without a phone. That's still my rule of thumb, that morning without a phone, to wake up and have some time with myself first, drink some chamomile for example, which I love and go out with a clear head and only then grab my phone.

Monika Rachtan
And tell me, what are the dangers of disinformation? Maybe on this youngest part of society today. Lives on the phone, who can't imagine 10 minutes without a phone. How can this society change? As you look at us today, who might we see in 20 years' time?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
We, when we started getting the phone, were not prepared for it either. We didn't know what was out there, and there was really nothing that today is called critical thinking education or media literacy. So these young people, who are now getting more and more of this critical thinking and media education, may be better prepared for it. On the other hand, we need to make it so. This is called the choose society approach. It's also referred to in the context of combating disinformation, that is, the joint action of the whole society to talk about this subject and to prepare all people for the fact that this is how it works. So we obviously have a huge threat that can affect young people who will just sit on the internet and do nothing else and just think about new technologies and what artificial intelligence can bring them and we don't know what else. Or we can just upload more information, talk about it, prepare our child. If it gets a phone call to the fact that not everything that's out there is true, that it needs to be verified, that let's not trust, for example, if a celebrity is talking about health and exactly a couple of different issues that you talked about, but rather if we have some fear, emotion that we're stirred up, then let's look for verified sources, look at where they are and.

Maja Mazurkiewicz
First of all, young people I think are even more aware of this, that they are also communicating to me that everything we put out in the media is. It is important, it is. It affects people somehow.

Monika Rachtan
You were talking about X today and I'm going to ask if you're also on Instagram, are you also watching what's happening on Instagram?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
Yes, as much as possible.

Monika Rachtan
How do you look at this problem? Because I think that's the problem, that it's the celebrities, the influencers who are communicating more about health and de facto making money from it. And that's their goal. I think education is one thing, but the effect is supposed to be achieved. It's supposed to be making money for them. I feel that young people, but even people our age who are on this internet, on this Instagram, totally don't think about the fact that it's all money.

Maja Mazurkiewicz
Completely the same. For example, about supplements. If we are talking, there is a lot of it and it is also the kind of online advertising that should be subject to verification. It is very often unnamed. There is this trend of speaking clearly and many celebrities are already saying that the posts in question are sponsored. And I think this is something that should be very compulsory and saying, especially if it's talking about health or our mental health. The European Union has put in place a couple of regulations somewhere that support this and we'll see if there are any changes.

Monika Rachtan
Sure. Tell me more, how do you think about the problem today, or maybe not a problem? How about this development? We have artificial intelligence, combining images, video texts. It's starting to get very complicated, even for someone like that who sits in these media. And is it going to be the case in a while that this artificial content is going to flood the internet, and is that where fake news can come in as a result?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
It's already so artificial. Artificial intelligence is nothing new. We all use it. I think it is a good thing. If used in the hands of good people, it can really do a lot of good. On the other hand, if we are the consumer of the internet, we need to be aware that unfortunately not everything we see or hear is true. So-called deep fakes, i.e. artificial intelligence interfering with an image or voice, are also very much in use before elections. For example, recently there have been such actions in the United States, where Biden's voice was used in this context to manipulate the election and tell people not to vote in the primaries. And things like that, too. Taylor Swift recently fell, fell victim to such a theme, so we as a people are again afraid and don't know what to trust and who to trust, But we need to be aware of that. And I think this return to emotion is very important. As regulators or people who or big online platforms, there should be different regulations. There are, for example, already things being done by YouTube, among others, such as showing that a particular video was made with artificial intelligence.

Monika Rachtan
It is very important to pay attention to this. I said at the very beginning of the programme that disinformation, that fake news can cause war. Do you think there is a piece of information that could cause something like that?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
There is a mass of this, and it is not even a question of whether it is one, but if we look at the context of the war in Ukraine, the disinformation that is being released by Russia and in Ukraine, but also in Poland in the context of, for example, refugees from Ukraine, is very strongly influencing how our attitudes towards refugees from Ukraine are changing. Anyway, there is also a lot of disinformation out there in the context of health, which is completely fake news, untrue information, and it also influences how we approach supporting Ukraine. Generally in the war.

Monika Rachtan
You mentioned the war in Ukraine and I know that you were very involved in helping refugees and you probably still are, or when you observe this Polish society of ours, but you are probably also in contact with Ukrainian society, you get the feeling that this fake news has spoiled our relationship, that it has made us different, that over these more than two years, when we are so close to each other, this information has made us not look at each other the way we did in the first days of the war.

Maja Mazurkiewicz
We did such a study even a year ago, more or less in Podkarpacie, which showed, among other things, that the image of the perception of refugees has changed, that although Ukrainian refugees in Poland are mainly women and children, our image has changed that they are men. Because yes. It's a rumour somewhere that's being let out in different narratives and through that we also have this change in attitudes. And it is, it affects a lot of different things, our vulnerabilities, so called. But that's how disinformation works. Disinformation affects attitude change, it affects who we vote for, it affects whether we take vaccines or don't take vaccines. It influences who we trust, whether we trust a doctor, whether we trust. Some fake account on Instagram that says something to us is this is such a KOR, going back to ourselves. And first of all we have to trust ourselves and our intuition. A little bit of that kind of goes back to that and that education and real information is key, so let's trust what's tested, verified and what's gone through proper vetting.

Monika Rachtan
One more very important thing that I am extremely interested in. Have you, as a disinformation expert, ever fallen victim to fake news?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
Of course we will. Of course everyone will fall down. Very often when I talk to young people, not only older people, who are also very vulnerable to disinformation, I often ask myself, have you ever just believed disinformation? They all sit there like that. Not at all, sorry very much, but I don't know a person who has never believed any narrative of disinformation or any false information that is given. Of course we do, because as I said earlier, we can't verify everything.

Monika Rachtan
Finally, three pieces of advice for the person who ends up watching us online and starts the reigning role on Twitter, X, Facebook or on Instagram. What to look out for each day?

Maja Mazurkiewicz
Pay attention to our emotions every day. As I said before, but if we feel a flow of negative emotions after watching a video or seeing a post, three breaths and we get back to ourselves. Secondly let's check verified sources, Credible media. The WH has a very good site, among other things, it also talks about this misinformation, so that's also important. And thirdly, because we also talked about those of our children and the elderly, groups that are more vulnerable to disinformation. Let's just talk about the fact that this disinformation is with our loved ones and let's say that not everything that's on the internet is true.

Monika Rachtan
Precisely not everything on the internet is true, but our programme is true.