Controlling the narrative? The politics of misinformation and truth

Millions watched video footage of dying student Henry Nowak being handcuffed by police officers, having been treated as the perpetrator of a racist hate crime rather than the victim of a malicious accusation and fatal stabbing. Amid concerns over how the public would react, immediately a battle commenced to gain control over the story of what happened and why.

With public debate on whether this was evidence of two-tier policing or institutionally mandated EDI policies, the authorities sought to rein in what they saw as misinformed, politicised reactions. There was even an attempt at tone-policing language, with Nigel Farage’s phrase ‘pure cold rage’ deemed as irresponsibly inciting civil unrest. From the Southport murders and subsequent riots in 2024, to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, similar disputes have erupted as officials and media advanced a particular interpretation of ‘the truth’, to ensure a morass of rumour, accusation and conspiracy-mongering was contained.

Are such official anxieties legitimate? Certainly, how society responds when sensitive, controversial events become matters of wild speculation, especially online, is important. How to communicate factual truth in today’s polarised, cynical times can be challenging. But while popular distrust of mainstream media is perhaps understandable, does a pendulum swing against officially endorsed ‘facts’ into unregulated online sources open up a relativist chasm that can be exploited by bad-faith actors?

Some fear official reactions to this ‘wild west’ of competing truth claims – such as extensive efforts to police disinformation, misinformation and ‘dangerous’ counternarratives – will lead to over-regulation, censorship, even manipulation of public discourse. For example, one UK minister wrote after the Afghan data-leak scandal and subsequent cover-up that the priority is to ‘maintain control of the narrative’.

And since the Covid lockdowns, when officials sought to suppress views that diverged from official public-health advice, there have been efforts to control the flow of information. In the UK, this was pursued through a secretive Counter Disinformation Unit – rebranded following criticism and concerns over privacy as the National Security and Online Information Team. Meanwhile, government has announced proposals to compel social-media channels and video-sharing platforms to build algorithmic tools to boost ‘trusted’ content creators such as the BBC.

In Europe, the EU’s Digital Services Act provides for armies of fact-checkers, regulations on Big Tech and a ‘European Democracy Shield’ to combat alleged foreign interference in elections, such as in Romania, by debunking ‘false’ claims – even ‘prebunking’ narratives before they gain traction.

But are these trends really that new? After all, George Orwell signalled alarm decades ago that by monopolising information, institutions can rewrite history, alter language, and reshape collective memory. From wartime propaganda departments to press barons using newspapers to further their interests, there has long been a desire to control the news and information space. Since the Conservative Party deployed advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi in the late 1970s, press secretaries, spin doctors and media managers have obsessed over whether their messages ‘cut through’.

So, to what extent do attempts at narrative control today represent something different, and what are the modern drivers of such phenomena?

Is controlling the narrative even possible today, in an era of technological change where the police can supply bodycam footage into the public arena and every citizen can film incidents on their phones and share with millions online? More broadly, what drives governments to seek control of the narrative – and have officials and the media not always been partisan? With governments short of purpose and big ideas, is the problem excessive narrative control – or the absence of any compelling narrative at all?