Navigating The Disinformation Landscape: Cultivating Cognitive Resilience

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Forbes
Brace yourself for information overload. In 2024, 3.2 billion people will head to the polls, stalked by a cacophony of information to win our hearts and minds. During a talk at Google in 2014, neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Levitin explained that "Americans take in five times more information today than they did in 1986…the equivalent of 174 newspapers worth of information." That was long before the ubiquitous launch of generative AI, promising to supercharge the volume of content to which we are exposed.

However, our cognitive processing power has certainly not scaled at the same rate, meaning that the human brain is struggling to keep up. It has become more challenging to know what is true or how to ascertain what is true. This creates a fertile ground for bad actors who are motivated to spread disinformation. Organizations across the public and private spheres need to address the challenge or risk losing their credibility, ultimately impeding their ability to survive. MORE