Transcript

What are some of the challenges societies face because of mis- and disinformation during disaster response?

How can Australia adapt to deal with these challenges? What lessons can we learn from incidents around the world?

What does the future look like if we don't adapt to this changing environment?

In this episode, Jodie Wrigley, Anthony Bradstreet, and Allison Curtis join David Andrews to discuss the evolving challenges posed by mis- and disinformation in crisis response scenarios.

(This transcript is AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies.)

Allison Curtis

Facts are competing with a fire hose of emotionally charged fiction, often designed to provoke anger or outrage.

Jodie Wrigley

Even in the most recent LA wildfires, you've got people monetizing AI imagery that they know is emotive and know what people will click on.

Anthony Bradstreet

From a fire service perspective, our focus was effectively 100 % on public information and warnings.

National Security Podcast

You're listening to the National Security Podcast, the show that brings you expert analysis, insights and opinion on the national security challenges facing Australia and the Indo-Pacific, produced by the ANU National Security College.

David Andrews

Welcome to the National Security Podcast. I'm David Andrews, Senior Manager for Policy and Engagement at the ANU National Security College. Today's podcast is being recorded on the land of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. This week I'm joined by Jodie Wrigley, Anthony Bradstreet and Allison Curtis to unpack the evolving challenge to Australia's national security posed by the interplay of mis and disinformation in crisis response scenarios.

Jodie Wrigley is head of social change at Strategic Communication and Engagement Agency, Senate SHJ. She's also a Senior Strategic Communication Advisor with the United Nations Office of Counterterrorism and in 2023 was a visiting fellow at the International Center for Counterterrorism in The Hague.

Anthony Bradstreet is the Chief Customer Officer for SAFE 365 Global, a risk management technology venture. For two decades he's been working in Australian emergency management and public safety including senior executive roles in strategy, risk management, communications and community resilience. Working with the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, he led the Public Information and Warnings team responsible to the Black Summer Bushfires and championed research projects investigating community responses to disasters with AFAC, the Australian Fire and Emergency Services Council, and as a member of the Research Committee for Natural Hazards Research Australia.

Allison Curtis is the Deputy Executive Director of the Strong Cities Network, a global network of 273 cities across 70 countries, working together on effective strategies and approaches to build local resilience to hate, extremism and polarization. She's nearly two decades and have experience in international security and strategic communications, spanning both policymaking and capacity building, including roles at the International Institute for Justice and the rule of law in Malta, the global counterterrorism forum in The Hague, and the Australian embassy in Washington, DC. Chody, Anthony and Ali, welcome to the National Security Podcast.

Jodie Wrigley

Thank you.

Allison Curtis

Hi, Thank you.

Anthony Bradstreet

Hi, Andrew.

David Andrews

Jodie, I was hoping you might be able to set the scene for us a bit as we begin this conversation, talking about this, I guess, interplay between emergencies and disaster response and the way in which we rely on public communications, and guess trust in public communications as well, and how that's conveyed to the public at large. So just to, I think, help our listeners understand what is a very complex but important topic, could you give us a... Could you flesh out that idea for me a little bit more?

Jodie Wrigley

Yeah, absolutely. And look, for me, this question really started to emerge through the visiting fellowship that you mentioned earlier, where I looked at the way in which violent extremists and actors are leveraging climate events, both long-term climate events and sudden ones, to really kind of, guess, whether it's for recruitment or whether it's to seed anti-institution rhetoric, et cetera.

And I guess through doing this research, found that, you know, two key things really, and one was that, you know, not surprisingly long ⁓ and very drawn out climate events are increasing the conditions conducive to terrorism and violent extremism that makes recruitment easier, particularly what we're looking at places like Africa and the Middle East. But I guess what was, I guess, more relevant to what we're talking about today, was this emerging pattern of narratives that we saw across the globe when it comes to more sudden and extreme climate events like floods and fires.

And I guess taking a step back and going back to basics, when a community sort of hit with a sudden shock, like a bushfire or flood, you see this kind of uniting element where social cohesion and togetherness is really strong, where you have neighbours helping neighbours. Where you have extraordinary acts by, you know, those frontline agencies, the firefighters, the police, and there's this real what we call sort of hero moment. And then once the sort of public safety threat is over, you see the community kind of ⁓ divide a bit or that kind of togetherness weighed. And what comes into it is sort of this question asking and disillusionment cliff that we call it, where people are starting to say, well, why did this happen? How did this happen? And who could have done what to prevent it. So trying to find that kind of almost blame aspect of it.

And what we found that through this disillusionment cliff, before people could get to that recovery phase, was a time when misinformation was really being hit hard in these communities. And some of it through kind of just unknowing misinformation, but really also being targeted in a way by bad actors to really try and amplify that sort of chaos that was happening. So it was, guess, when we saw this pattern, I it's actually something that's really interesting to think about from a crisis communication perspective and what we traditionally doing, you know, really matching what's happening in that public sphere.

And I guess a couple of the examples of that, and one was the Maui wildfires

where we actually saw not just misinformation creating division and chaos after the public safety event, but actually before that. So when people were still in the state of danger, we saw people going back to their homes too early. We saw people leaving evacuation centres. And this was under the guise because they had heard narratives around this was a government controlled event, there were satellites that were setting individual places alike, which sounds ridiculous now when we're talking about it. But when people are in that heightened state of fear, they don't think rationally. And that's all coming from these narratives around the great reset theory, which is being linked to a number of different events and violent events around the world.

So again, this sort of real, I guess, infiltration of these narratives, putting people in harm's way. And I would imagine, you know, really hampering the efforts of those on the ground police and firefighters who were trying to do their job. And I think, you know, we saw similar things with in Spain with the floods, also more recently with the LA wildfires. so, yes, so this really interesting pattern that was targeting to place almost, you know, taking place across a number of these very different scenarios across different parts of the world.

David Andrews

So for those who might remember, when you're talking about these questions around replacement theories and space lasers, this is the famous quote unquote Jewish space lasers incident, isn't it? That sort of phrase, I think, sticks in the mind. And as an example of such a telling and negatively impactful case of disinformation, misinformation there, I was quite interested in that division you made between, I guess, the incidental and the deliberate. Is that something you could maybe unpack for us a little bit more here? I think we talk about when it comes to misinformation, disinformation, there's sometimes when it's conducted by states, by criminal entities, sometimes by people who are just wilful, and other times it's incidental. It's the kind of things we accidentally share and then get reposted thousands of times and we've all now...learned something wrong. Could you maybe unpack that particular dimension for us a little bit?

Jodie Wrigley

Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, all of us are probably guilty at some point in time of sharing a piece of misinformation unknowingly. There's no malicious intent, but you thought, that's interesting. And I kind of forwarded on to my family WhatsApp group and don't think too much of about it. it's, you know, it may be completely harmless, but in situations like this, particularly when you're talking about where people trapped, what's the way that the fires are coming you know, even that misinformation can send, you know, police and firefighters completely in the wrong direction, or it can, you know, cause people to worry when maybe there's not that much sense of a worry. But I think what was really interesting and when we looked at the breakdown of the narratives is that you had a piece of that sort of misinformation.

And I'll give you another example from the Maui wildfires that children were sent home from school and that then basically there was this piece of misinformation saying where are the children? And then very quickly, the conspiracy theories came along when we went into QAnon territory about the deep state kidnapping children. And to give you an idea of the kind of percentage, so you had 25 % of outpouring of grief that you would normally see in these events in the comments. You had 25 % of this sort of misinformation or logical fallacy, like some of these are valid questions to ask. And then you have about 50 percent, which were very clearly bots, very clearly people who were generating AI contents of, you know, the sort of deep state figures and going back to the pizza shop. QAnon theories, which took over most of that commentary. And, you know, big news outlets did debunking efforts.

But it was almost like, you know, they'd started running the race when it was already over and it was sort of didn't get anywhere near the cut through that it did. it can be sort of varying levels, but it all seems to tie together.

David Andrews

I think one of the points, I guess, to highlight here and that where we wanted to, the reason why we're having this conversation is that I think a lot of us are broadly familiar with the concepts of misinformation and disinformation. And they're quite topical. They've been addressed through public policy for many years now. But it's this connection to natural disasters and crises and disaster response. as you say, something like QAnon and Pizzagate and anti-Semitic Jewish space laser conspiracies coming out of bushfires, which isn't necessarily how we'd think of that sort of flow of information. And we may, in conversations around national security, the technical or the informational, the misinterpreted information, separated from climate, when actually they can be very deeply intertwined.

And so maybe, Anthony, this is a good time to move to you, given your deep expertise on the frontline with the Rural Fire Service and in emergency management in dealing with these crises. We're talking about, I mentioned in your introduction, things like Black Saturday and public messaging. So can you talk about how these trends and these challenges that Jodie's laid out, how are they manifesting on the ground in the Australian context?

Anthony Bradstreet

Yeah, absolutely. And I think if we start with, you know, probably something I saw in my early career in emergency services a lot more frequently, which was the misinformation aspect. And as social media became more popular in communities and local community networks and community pages were set up ⁓ as disaster, the impact of local communities, ⁓ local communities are talking to each other. It's just part of that normal communication networking process.

And people are contributing to that discussion. And exactly as Jodie's described, sometimes people are quite ⁓ unintentionally sharing information that might not be correct, but they're hearing it through those local networks.

It might be that the fire is moving in this direction and that road's closed, but the fire service are telling people to evacuate via that road. that degree of misinformation can definitely cause challenges for emergency services. We have to divert resources to ⁓ error check and validate that intelligence on the ground. We're deploying resources, it might be planes or helicopters to try to get eyes on the situation and confirm, which is all taking effort away from the firefighting effort and the primary initiatives that's going on there.

I think that's probably the examples that have been consistent over the last 10, 15 years, 20 years in the emergency management discourse. And we've had strategies like virtual operations support teams and intelligence scraping and things like this to try to understand and respond and debunk those types of misinformation activities.

What we've seen over time and as the incidents and the disaster and the scale of disasters increases, those have changed. From a flooding example that I saw recently, as Jodie said, you can have these information where these issues where there's a scaric of truth to what people are conveying and when I reflect on the Northern New South Wales flooding that impacted Lismore, one of those that came out of that incident was cloud seeding. And it was purely this piece of information that the community had seen watching things like flight radar of a plane doing a grid pattern over the area that was being affected. And their logical conclusion of that was that that plane was cloud seeding and intensifying the event, know, ipso facto on the order of government effectively and that anti-authoritarian sentiment was coming through in that example. And the reality was we use planes like that for LIDAR for reconnaissance, gather intelligence all the time and that takes away significant communications resources to debunk and respond to that incident appropriately.

It's laying the ground for that sort of anti-government, anti-authoritarian sort of sentiment. And as the incident scale grows, when I reflect on the experiences of Black Summer, probably the really common one that we were hearing about was, it was hashtag arson emergency. And it was this belief that was running counter to the climate change narrative that climate was contributing to the often used word now, the unprecedented nature of that disaster. And it was effectively saying, look, you know, all of these fires are being started through arson. It's not climate change. The reality is that working in the operations room, I'd finish work one night, leave the operations centre and there'd be maybe 70 fires burning across the landscape. We'd know that there'd be a dry lightning storm crossing the landscape that evening. And the next day we'd come back to the office and we'd have more than 200 fires. And that was really the way that those fires were proliferating across the landscape.

So it wasn't necessarily an arson emergency. And that took a lot of resources from us to debunk and respond to that information as well. So it's definitely an emerging trend and we...We now know looking back on that situation that as Jodie described here, the roles of bots to amplify that hashtag arson emergency in that context was there.  But it was really just a narrative at the time from a fire service perspective. Our focus was effectively 100 % on public information and warnings. We're trying to get the message out into the community that the warnings and the public information that we're providing is most important. And all of these narratives really just drew resources ⁓ and attention from that process. So it was a really interesting sort of case study for us to manage.

David Andrews

The point around arson sticks out to me, and you'll tell me, I'm sure, if I'm making an incorrect sort of connection here, but it seems a bit reminiscent of connecting to these issues of deliberate disinformation, right? And you have people who are taking actions because they, who knows, they get a kick out of it, they want to feel like they've played a part in this process, they're opportunists. It gets not always necessarily deeply planned out and structured in a kind of, there's not a...a grand conspiracy, but sometimes we just know for a fact that people respond to these scenarios in ways that seem perplexing to most of us. whether that's lighting a fire or it's setting online disinformation aflame, to use the reference, something that leaves that to me as a sort of parallel. But thinking of your long career in emergency management, Anthony, is this something that you've seen evolving more now that we have this much more connected environment? Or if these kind of pressure has always been there at underlying levels, but they've just been exacerbated by technological solutions.

Anthony Bradstreet

Yeah, absolutely. I think, like I was saying, the misinformation and the local scale incidents, they've certainly been there throughout my career. What I'm seeing and observing over the last few years is that increasing connectivity, that increasing reliance on particularly social media as a channel for communities to source information. And I guess probably contributing to that as well and probably something that Ali and Jodie could speak to more would be the potential fragmentation of society and particularly the political views. That's really feeding that opportunity for, in the case that we described for arson emergency or mismanagement of public lands. All of these things have a political lens to them. And there are certainly some people that absolutely believe it. And that's quite right and reasonable in any society to have that difference of views.

The challenge is really the amplification of that. And as that is amplified, it really does grow that anti-government and anti-authority sentiment. The problem we have during a disaster is if that anti-authority sentiment grows and gains critical mass, then the effectiveness of our warnings that we are distributing to try to protect people and keep people safe, safe life and property, that can be diminished.

And that's a net loss for the government, for that society. So that's really the challenge that we're trying to balance in that disaster context. And it flows over into the recovery context as well, as communities rely on government to recover.  If that seed of doubt and that seed of anti-government sentiment has taken hold.

We know that that can be a really challenging scenario for governments to operate and to try to support communities in through that recovery journey. So it certainly produces challenges, not just acutely during disasters, but they have a very long tail through the recovery and reconstruction process.

David Andrews

I'd love to dive more into that social cohesion piece a bit later in the conversation, but I'll just flag one component that stuck in my mind that we can maybe build on as well is the distinction between urban, rural and regional communities in Australia, and I guess the amount of services that are provided to them. speaking from someone who's worked in the rural fire service before, I mean, I'm sure there's that sense – whether it's true or not – but that perception that communities don't always feel supported by central governments in capital cities and things, and that that can generate underlying levels of discontent or tension, which can then be manipulated or built upon in these kind of ways that we're discussing.

But I'll just park that momentarily. I think there's, Ali, we're going to turn to the international angle of this now. And I think in rather tragic circumstances, instance that jumps to mind for me is the death of, I suppose, murder, the targeted killing of firefighters in the United States in, I think it was Northern Idaho, who were lured by a purposely lit fire and then killed by, it seems like, extremists only in recent days. We don't necessarily need to get into the specifics of that example, but it just points to, I guess, the internationalized model of this. And again, that interplay between climate or emergencies and and these sort of these challenges we're talking about, but could you give us a sense of the international picture that we're talking about here? We've talked a lot about what it looks like for Australia, but how else are these trends playing out in the international scene?

Allison Curtis

It's hugely concerning that we're seeing not only these trends play out internationally, but escalating. And so if we stay on the of the topic of fire response and then picking up on that convergence of anti-government sentiment and political agenda, one example that comes to mind that is really quite illustrative of the challenge is the August, 2023 wildfires in Greece – where you really saw conspiracy theories explode on social media. Some claimed the government had set the fires intentionally to clear land for wind farms. Others blamed migrants or foreign agents for setting the blaze. And so you see that convergence of different agenda. And these false narratives spread so fast that many residents refused evacuation orders thinking they were being manipulated. Firefighters had to stop their rescue work to counter misinformation, which just delayed aid, put lives at risk. And, you know, it's not just hampering fire response. What we're seeing globally and through many of the cities through the Strong Cities Network is that it's actively igniting and exacerbating new crises. So we're seeing misinformation and conspiracy theories turning emergencies and, you know, daily crises into flash points for social division.

And I, you know, one of the, I'm here in the UK, one of the examples recently is the Southport riots in England last year. For those who are unaware of what happened, a heinous mass stabbing attack targeting girls at a Taylor Swift themed yoga and dance workshop was falsely described as an attack by a Muslim asylum seeker. And later as the narrative sort of continued to develop part of a broader Islamist terror attack, within hours, riots broke out, a community vigil organized for the victims was hijacked by people with really specific anti-immigrant agenda. Mosques were attacked, businesses were targeted, riots spread right across the UK. And the rumor at the centre of it was supercharged by posts on social media urging people to gather for protests, to take back the streets, to show their anger. And look, some of those amplifying the noise included really prominent political commentators and politicians. That was incredibly concerning as an example of how what should, you know, what was a heinous attack, but really very quickly became sort of from a localized experience to one that engulfs the country. And this pattern around the world, it's repeating in various contexts and with escalating impacts.

And if we look at a very big picture geopolitical conflicts such as India and Pakistan, which, you know, inflamed again in May. The tensions were real, shelling, there were troop movements, but it was really a flood of fake and repurposed content that presented the most significant risk of escalation in what is essentially a nuclear conflict. So you had images of an explosion in Beirut in 2020, reposted as breaking news of a Pakistani missile strike on India. You had a farm fire spun into a drone attack. You had flames on foreign media of Indian jets being shot down. You had a fake letter from an army chief, a spoof account impersonating a national security advisor. Even video game clips were passing off as rocket footage. So these images, the videos, they were designed to stir panic, to sow confusion, to really inflame tensions and provoke the sort of emotional reactions and shape perceptions before facts could emerge. So what we find most concerning, what we're seeing globally across our network, in every one of these cases, disinformation wasn't just confusing people, it was inflaming violence, it was delaying response, and it was deepening social divisions. So, and this is something I think Jodie, you know, and at the have sort of touched on, and I think we really need to consider this as a matter of urgency now, governments at the local, state and national levels, we can no longer really consider this as sort of background noise in a crisis. It's actually a threat multiplier.

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David Andrews

Ali, I think you're absolutely right that that notion of threat multiplication is hopefully not overwhelming, but such a pressing and critical challenge, not just for the state to address. So not just for local governments and state governments and federal governments, almost people in community, individuals, who almost facing this sort of in local levels and through social media again, being such a powerful example of this and I think we all talk about the power of rumour and hearsay and how it gets carried away and how it can so badly affect people's lives. But we're about this at an even grander scale.

I think we've talked about before on the podcast the particular role played by, Russia and China in their sort of misinformation sort of bot farms and structures like that. So there are the grand geopolitical dimensions of it, but I think we're seeing it as you've laid out coming into our lives in very different ways and very tangible ways.

What does the future look like if we don't actually adapt to this changing environment? Or what does adaptation even look like if it's such an endemic problem? Maybe, Ali, if I stick with you to respond to that first, if that's alright, what comes next, I suppose, is the natural question.

Allison Curtis

That can be sort of overwhelming to think about. I feel like we're already in sort of a dystopian environment when it comes to facts versus fiction. But look, the state of play now really is that facts are competing with a fire hose of emotionally charged fiction, often designed to provoke anger or outrage. And fiction travels much faster than truth. So if we don't adapt, And I'm talking at the individual level as well as the local state national government levels. I think what we're increasingly going to see is that what starts as a local incident can quickly and will quickly escalate into national or international crises within a matter of hours. And I'm not being hyperbolic about that. The danger is no longer just misinformation in your sphere, in your town, in your city – It's how fast it connects to sort of global narratives and grievances. And to a certain extent, we're already seeing this. ⁓ And I guess our fear and what we're already starting to see is that over time, communities become increasingly more fractured throughout these experiences and their impacts. They become increasingly more vulnerable to divisive narratives. And as a community, as a city,

We lose the ability, we lose the trust to respond collectively. And I think Jodie, that's going back to your point that you made earlier about that united response. And, I always like to think that's a uniquely Australian thing that, you know, we gather together, we help our neighbours but you know, that's also something you see in communities around the world. But as they are coming under that pressure, as that mistrust is growing, you are starting to see that chip away and what that means for broader social cohesion is really quite concerning.

David Andrews

Jodie, if you want to build on any of that, certainly, but I think that social cohesion point is one again, I think we've all come back to it to different degrees of it's sort of the downstream consequence of this. So this isn't just an isolated technological or limited problem, but it has quite fundamental impacts on the structure of our society, the relationship between groups and people in society. And I think especially for a country like Australia, which is founded on migration and on sort of a shared national purpose and identity, but with lots of migrant groups and different forms of stratification that if we want to bind together and have social cohesion, which seems to be a big focus of government across the world at the moment, I how do we adapt to ensure that occurs given all that we've talked about?

Jodie Wrigley

Yeah, look, a big question, but I guess, you know, one of the things that, you know, we've been thinking about and talking about is why is this happening? And I think sometimes it's very easy to just put it as one cause, you know, whether it's a foreign interference, whether it is a social media company challenge. But I think if we take a step and say, well, why is this happening? We've kind of got, for want of a better term, a perfect storm if we're talking about that kind of public sphere or strategic communications perspective where we've kind of got three competing factors all coming together.

So, you know, as Anthony and Ali have both said, we've got this declining trust or anti-institution sentiment, but we have to remember communities have been through multiple compounding events. So, you know, even if we just look at Australia, we had fires, floods, then COVID, then fires, then floods, then cost of living, all of these things don't give us the opportunity to rebound and that kind of why did this happen and that blame very easily leads us into that loss of trust in government and institutions, but also that kind of looking for other answers. So we've kind of got this primed community for want of a better term if you wanted to create a bit of havoc of what you could do. So we've got this delight, declining trust. And then we've got this what we call like polluted public sphere. And yes, it is the bots, yes it is misinformation, but even in the most recent ⁓ LA wildfires, you've got people monetizing AI imagery that they know is emotive and know what people will click on to actually earn themselves a living. And, you know, the classic example was the firefighter walking through the flames holding baby animals. It was completely AI generated and the person who generated admit that he was trying to just raise awareness around the challenge, but ultimately he's getting paid for the amount of clicks that he has.

So we've got even this other element now of monetising community division. And then we've got, for want of better term, like these grievance hunters that are looking for division and going, right, how can I continue to feed that anti-democracy or anti-institution sentiment? And then finally, we've kind of got this...changing face of news media. And news media used to be the pinnacle for crisis communication. And, you know, now with the shift into streaming, the shift into news being behind paywalls and people living in their own echo chambers, it's reducing the amount of broad news that people are available to and can people can actually do their own checking and their own fact checks to understand.

So if you think about these kind of three elements all playing together, it's a significant challenge when we think what do we do? And I guess to sum up, it's like for me, I think it's an ecosystem. And yes, there is all of the external factors, but I think we're also underestimating communities and what we can tell them about this environment and how we can give them the tools. I mean, we probably talk about this on a daily basis, but

most people are just living their lives every day and probably aren't aware. And we could actually really help empower them and give them agency to, I guess, think about this from their perspective and who do they want to go to if there is a crisis or emergency and how can they think about that now before something comes along?

David Andrews

To get specific, if we're thinking about the Black Saturday fires and things of that nature, in an Australian context, do you think, what would be different if that happened today? Would there be anything different? Or would it be much the same, do you think?

Anthony Bradstreet

Look, I think it would definitely be different for all the reasons that Jodie's just described. know, none of those factors that contribute to the current context have decreased in the five years following Black Summer. Yeah. I do consider that what's that role of AI at the moment?

You know, previously that misinformation or disinformation was typically words on a page. Now, if we add in the potential for highly contextualized highly emotive imagery to be disseminated that's tailored to a target audience and a location at that time, that can be incredibly damaging to the objectives that governments are trying to achieve to try to promote public safety at that time. So I definitely think the situation would be more challenging now than five years ago.

At the same time, I kind of turn my mind to what's changed from a government perspective, what's changed from a societal perspective that might increase the protective factors or the controls to try to manage this. And I certainly think some of the strategies and the crisis comms playbooks have sort of gained prominence. Things like Resist-to, the UK government framework for responding to mis and disinformation. Some of the governance structures and the collaboration across government and the communications teams to try to provide a more structured whole of government response in terms of crisis comps. That's all certainly improved since Black Summer and COVID,  where we've learnt lessons through those processes and we've improved.

But I really think the long-term challenge here is some of these protective factors like media literacy and as Allison described, that social capital that has probably, we've probably taken for granted in Australia in a lot of ways. It takes years, decades or generations to build really good amounts of social capital in a society. And the challenge with social capital is as all of these events, can chip away at that social capital, we can wind up in that deficit as well. I think that's something where certainly governments and emergency services are returning back to that focus on building community resilience, empowering local communities, strengthening local community leaders so that we have more voices to defend against that fire hose of disinformation and misinformation as Ali described it and we have more trusted voices that local communities are able to go to get that trusted advice.

Governments and emergency services have a role in that, but they're not the only line of defence. We know that local leaders, be they in local government or just in the local community, they all have a really important role and they can absolutely amplify and drive the response and the defence against that misinformation at a local level as well.

David Andrews

This is something we've done a little bit on the podcast in recent weeks is to really kind of, you know, drive home that that point of application that you've just touched on there, Anthony. To sort of frame with the context of if you were sitting down with the relevant portfolio minister, whether it's the Minister for Home Affairs or, or emerging management or whatever it might be, and you had to give them a, your pitch for sort of the your optimal first tangible policy change or thing to implement and do in response to sort of what we can do to address these problems, to potentially empower those community leaders or whatever it might be. Just as a way of sort of concluding our conversation, I thought I might pose that to each of you in that way and say, sort of to, we've identified, I think, a lot of problems here and a lot of challenges and a really complex environment. And hopefully our listeners now better understand that threat environment that we're facing and this suite of problems we're addressing. But if we were to think about what we do about it and boil it down to a set of recommendations or a top couple of things, what would that be for you? And Anthony, I'll stick with you in the first instance, but what would your key policy recommendations be to address this set of challenges?

Anthony Bradstreet

Yeah, Andrew. So probably continuing with that last response, I'd certainly look to those local communities, local leaders, local resources. The more that we're able to build that cohesion and that networking between local organisations and local institutions and local arms of government to connect with and engage with local leaders and build those voices.

I know that can be hard to define and hard to communicate, but we are doing it day to day. You know, from when I reflect on the role of, you know, the rural fire service in local communities, I'm very thankful for all of the work that all of those volunteers do in every local community across the state and the country, because they are effectively local representatives of the organization and the work that they do in that community builds trust, builds relationships, and that builds the credibility of the organization when we do have to issue public information and warnings. I really do think that a lot of those small investments in local communities pay significant dividends when disasters strike.

David Andrews

I will just briefly interject here for a small plug for the National Security College's process of Community Consultations that we're going through at the moment at time of recording. So we're here, 1st of July. It's something that we're doing around the country, going out to state capitals, sorts of regional centres, and you can make submissions, I believe, online as well. We'll share a link to that in the show notes. But it's a process of this very point that you raise, Anthony, of engaging with communities at a local level and all the way up through that those sort of stratifications of society in Australia. It's not just about the federal, but actually a lot of these things first tie in at the local and at the community level. So just to reinforce that and to give our wider audience an opportunity to contribute to that process as we draw perspectives from across Australia to shape the work that we do and to feed back into government as well. That's an opportunity I'd extend to you all.

Ali, perhaps if I turn to you next, thinking about what we need to do in response, what do you think what are your key takeaways here?

Allison Curtis

So I think Jodie and Anthony have mentioned some really important foundations. So Jodie mentioned trust, which is obviously the essential foundation. Anthony, thanks so much for mentioning digital literacy, community resilience, building those trusted voices. Rather than repeating, I want to hone in on ways that local governments and national governments can sort of redefine what their community strategies look like. And I think...given the changes to the media landscape, this is the time that all levels of government really need to be re-imagining what they mean by strategic communications, not only during sort of daily operations, but pre and during a crisis. And those communication strategies have to prioritize facts, accessibility, and they need to be exercised, just like fire drills. Like we need to get into the habit of making sure that people know what their role will be, that who they'll be communicating to and with during a time of crisis. And I think in this day and age, that has to include some sort of rumour control centre page hub that activates the moment a crisis begins. And it should be delivering, you know, sort of daily fact versus myth updates, multilingual questions and answers for people.

It should stream regular briefings from trusted local voices. And the goal really needs to be speed and reach. It must be highly visible, easy to access and pushed through multiple trusted channels, not hidden in official bulletins or press releases, but showing up in people's feeds, in their language and on time. And when I mentioned speed, if I could just, you know, go back to that example that I gave earlier about Southport attacks last year. Well, in May this year in Liverpool, a car drove into a crowd during a parade. Learning from the 20 hour information vacuum in Southport that really allowed that crisis to escalate, we saw a change of approach by the Liverpool police and local authorities. Within two hours, police had confirmed the suspect was a white British male.

They released his name, age and origin. And that clarity stopped conspiracy theories before they could go viral. It was a lesson they learnt from Southport that silence breeds misinformation. And look, early disclosure of such information is not always going to be appropriate in every case, particularly where there's an ongoing investigation. But I think what Liverpool showed us is how timely verified facts can really stop disinformation before it escalates.

David Andrews

I think that's a great point and a great example. another one maybe that comes to mind for me is that the work of the Australian Electoral Commission and their social media team, making sort of common English, pithy, often humorous responses to people who can pose them all kinds of questions around the electoral process and doing that in a live responsive manner as well. I think that's, there are great examples for us to draw from. So thank you for for drawing our attention to that one. Jodie, I'll give you the final word here. What are your key recommendations for us to focus on in addressing these challenges?

Jodie Wrigley

Look, I think that potentially controversially, think we kind of, I think Ali and Anthony have sort of said this, but I think we need to break the current crisis communication model. So if I bring it back to comms, crisis communication very, you know, I guess purposely is very rigid because people's lives are in danger and it should be very rehearsed, very evidence based. But I think we've got to a point where we can't just tap it around the edges and carve it. I think we actually need to pull it apart and put it back together in this new environment, which includes more ways for people to connect in different channels, all of the things that we've spoken about. But I think that's our only chance of really keeping up with the many voices and the many actors and this new information ecosystems that's far down the road of, think, where we are at the moment.

David Andrews

We've had a really wide ranging and detailed conversation on what is a extremely challenging and persistent challenge. But thank you, Jodie Wrigley and Anthony Bradstreet, and Allison Curtis for shedding some light on this and giving us some hope and ways to move forward and things for us all to focus on as we address this novel and evolving national security challenge. So thanks for joining us on the podcast.

Anthony Bradstreet

Thanks for watching.

Jodie Wrigley

Thank you.

National Security Podcast

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