'Democracy under threat' from disinformation at 2026 Scottish Parliament election

Youth educators are now calling for critical thinking to be taught to children as young as five to help create a generation that is able to identify and tackle misinformation and disinformation.

Misinformation is fake news created and spread by mistake, often by individuals who do not realise what they are sharing is false.

Disinformation, on the other hand, is fake news deliberately created by someone who knows it is false, often in a bid to influence how others think and behave.

Mark Frankel, from Full Fact, an organisation working to challenge fake news, said the growing problem of misinformation and disinformation would have an impact on the 2026 Scottish Parliament election.

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He said: “Democracy is really under threat from misinformation and disinformation. At the moment trust in politics, trust in the political system, has never been lower than it is today.

“The public feels ill equipped to deal with the manipulation of information they see before them and the threat of AI as they see it.

“Things are emerging online which are being pushed to them and they don’t know whether to trust it or believe it.”

During the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election in June, Scottish politics was forced to deal with this issue head-on.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage used political advertising to falsely claim that Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar would prioritise the Pakistani community if his party was in power. Mr Farage’s party also claimed the Scottish Labour leader was fuelling sectarianism.

When asked by Scottish journalists whether he would apologise or retract his statement, Mr Farage doubled down on his election campaign against Mr Sarwar.

It is also shaping the debate around some of the most talked about political issues.

Perth and Kinross Council has been forced to issue multiple official statements to debunk rumours online that led to two protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers over the summer.

This also comes amid warnings of Iranian-backed bots spreading pro-Scottish independence content online. Research suggests more than 1,300 X accounts posting pro-independence content in recent months were actually part of an Iranian state-backed disinformation campaign.

First Minister John Swinney separately accused X owner Elon Musk of spreading “misinformation” earlier this week following an incident in Dundee where a girl was charged for alleged possession of offensive weapons.

Footage of a young girl apparently brandishing weapons has been widely shared on social media, with posts making claims about it gaining millions of views.

Mr Musk – the billionaire owner of social media platform X – shared several posts on his site that made claims about the incident, including the migrant status of the people allegedly confronted.

Mr Swinney condemned the “deliberate disinformation” he said was being used to “stoke up fear and alarm” around the country. He said: “What is very important is that Police Scotland have issued a warning about deliberate misinformation that is being used to stoke up fear and alarm in our communities.

“I am concerned about that and everybody should be concerned about that because we live in a fundamentally safer country today than we did 40 years ago ... people like Elon Musk, with the misinformation that has been stoked up about this case, are trying to undermine that sense of cohesion within our communities and it is totally and utterly unacceptable, and Police Scotland are absolutely right to call it out.”

Mr Frankel said both governments could do more to tackle the spread of misinformation and disinformation online. He is urging the UK government to strengthen its legislation to help protect people online.

“It is absolutely within us to do this,” he said. “There are things that can be done at a political level to make sure the legislation protects us more robustly from online harms.

“We already have the Online Safety Act, which could have more fakery brought under its purview. There is also Westminster legislation in the Elections Bill, which can tackle false advertising and deep fakery.”

The other area where progress can be made on tackling online disinformation and misinformation is in education.

Mr Frankel was joined by Faith Bateman, from the WOSDEC development education centre, and The Scotsman to discuss this issue at the Festival of Politics in Holyrood earlier this month.

After working for a number of years as a modern studies teacher, Ms Bateman said she believed embedding critical thinking into all levels of the school curriculum would help create young voters who were able to not only spot false information online, but tackle it as well.

She said: “I think the sheer amount of information young people have access to means it is a big issue.

“Phones and social media are so prominent and young people are using them all the time. So they need to understand the difference between misinformation, disinformation, fake news, and what is real and what isn’t.”

Ms Bateman said it was important teachers and pupils were able to have “open conversations” in the classroom about critical thinking and recognising disinformation online, so they could ask how credible what they see on their smartphones really is.

“This is very much a journey everyone is on - teachers, educators, everyone is learning at the same time,” she said.

“Young people as early as P1 and P2 are developing critical-thinking skills and weaving that all the way through to upper secondary, so everyone is used to it and saying the same thing.”

Kirsten Urquhart, chief executive of Young Scot, added: “Equipping young people with the tools they need to navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape, where misinformation can spread rapidly, is vitally important.

“Trusted information plays a crucial role in assisting young people to identify and evaluate the reliability of what they see, read and hear.”