In nearly five million mailboxes all over Sweden, an updated version of a Cold War-era brochure arrived this week as a definitive, modern family’s guide to 21st century emergency preparedness.
As such, in addition to war, the government-issued booklet included mention of terrorist attacks, cyber threats and climate-change fuelled weather — all of which were negligible or non-existent risks back in the Soviet era when the If War Comes pamphlet was regularly printed in Sweden.
When the new 20-page version was unveiled to the public last week for the first time in nearly 30 years, headlines worldwide focused on the threat of war. Sweden is just downwind from Russia, after all, and the new nervousness in the neighbourhood is infectious.
But many of those headlines missed details of a significant addition on page 4: the warning about fake news.
With that, Sweden becomes one of the first nations to directly warn its citizens, in plain language, about the perils of disinformation in the modern age — and to provide concrete advice on how to avoid falling for it.
Of course, the threat of made-up news masquerading as legitimate is an old problem with a new name, given new life by new technology.
Some of the old pamphlets shown to CBC News in Stockholm do make a passing mention of being “on guard” against propaganda in relation to war’s “spies and saboteurs.” One depicts that multiple threat with the image of a large spider.
But the brochure’s modern version dedicates a full page to disinformation — whether in peacetime or in war.
“States and organisations are already using misleading information in order to try and influence our values and how we act,” it reads under the heading “Be on the Lookout for False Information.”
“The best protection against false information and hostile propaganda is to critically appraise the source,” it continues. “The way to do that is to ask questions like ‘Is this factual information or opinion?’ or ‘Is the source trustworthy?'”
It goes on to advise seeking out information from more than one source in order to verify it.
The warning arrives just months before a fall election in which foreign meddling and fake news are a significant concern. For authorities, it’s a happy coincidence.
“That is quite a big issue in Sweden especially now — we are going into elections,” said Christina Andersson of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, which prepared the brochure.
“It’s a problem in the society as a whole,” she said in an interview at the agency’s offices in Stockholm. She would not speculate as to the main source of existing fake news in Sweden.