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Katie Michel is insights manager at Fullintel.
There’s a moment I’ve noticed more than once in client calls: A piece of false or misleading information has already made three platform stops before anyone in the room is aware it exists. It started as a stitched TikTok. A Threads reply thread picked it up. By the time it hit LinkedIn and landed in a journalist’s DMs, it had absorbed the credibility of each platform along the way and stripped its original context entirely.
This is the new disinformation pipeline.
Traditional media literacy frameworks were built for a world where misinformation traveled in one direction: from fringe to mainstream. The assumption was that if you monitored credible outlets and watched for bad actors, you’d catch the fire before it spread. That model is broken. On newer platforms, misinformation doesn’t announce itself. It moves through remix, reaction and repost while gaining emotional resonance with each iteration, often shedding the source entirely by the second or third share.
TikTok’s algorithm doesn’t prioritize accounts, it prioritizes content. That’s a fundamental shift. A claim made by an account with 12 followers can outperform a correction from an authoritative source if the format is more compelling. Threads, meanwhile, has created a culture of rapid, conversational takes where nuance is structurally discouraged, not unlike X. Short replies in fast-moving threads flatten complexity. And because Threads is tied to Instagram’s social graph, something that feels like a niche conversation can actually be reaching a highly relevant audience, including journalists, advocates and opinion leaders, without triggering any of the monitoring tools most comms teams still rely on.
Communications professionals who came up navigating these platforms, not studying them from a distance, internalized these dynamics by necessity. They know that a TikTok comment section can be where the real narrative is forming, while the video itself is a distraction. They recognize when a Threads thread is a genuine conversation versus a coordinated pile-on in its early stages. That pattern recognition is a professional asset, and it’s one the field needs to take seriously.
Three actionable takeaways for PR professionals:
- Map your monitoring to where narratives actually form, not where they land. If your media monitoring starts at the news article, you’re already late. Build listening into TikTok comments, Threads reply chains and emerging community spaces. Not just publication-level coverage.
- Treat platform fluency as a strategic competency. Invite colleagues who actively use these platforms into early-stage issues assessment and crisis planning. The ability to read a Threads thread or a TikTok comment section for early-warning signals is a skill worth building into your team structure deliberately.
- Debrief disinformation cycles, not just crises. After a false narrative runs its course, trace it back. Where did it originate? What gave it momentum? Which platform amplified it most effectively? That forensic work sharpens your anticipation and makes your next response faster and more accurate.
The stakes are real. In industries where trust is core to the brand, like healthcare, financial services and utilities, a disinformation cycle that goes undetected for 48 hours can cause measurable reputational damage. The monitoring gap between where narratives form and where most organizations are watching is where crises are born.
