Controlling the narrative? The politics of misinformation and truth
claireMillions 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. Amidst concerns over how the public would react, immediately a battle commenced to gain control over the story of what happened and why. Was two-tier policing to blame? Institutionally mandated EDI policies? Should people react with ‘pure cold rage’? From the Southport murders and subsequent riots in 2024, to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, similar disputes have erupted as officials and media advance their preferred interpretation as ‘the truth’. As one UK minister wrote after the Afghan data-leak scandal and subsequent cover-up, the priority is to ‘maintain control of the narrative’.
Such reactions reflect anxieties over ‘misinformation’ and fears that counter-narratives will gain traction on social media. 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 is this was pursued through a secretive Counter Disinformation Unit, rebranded following criticism and concerns over privacy as the National Security and Online Information Team.
The Online Safety Act already has a major impact on information flows, a problem exacerbated by plans to compel social-media channels and video-sharing platforms to build algorithmic controls to boost ‘trusted’ – in other words, government approved – content creators. 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.
George Orwell worried 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’. To what extent do attempts at narrative control today represent something new and different?
What drives governments to seek control of the narrative – and have officials and the media not always been partisan? To what extent does the media shape reality rather than merely reflect it? Is the mainstream media simply ill-equipped to keep pace with political change, or has it abandoned even the aspiration of impartiality? With governments short of purpose and big ideas, is the problem excessive narrative control – or the absence of any compelling narrative at all?
