Misinformation, Disinformation, and Online Propaganda

Abstract

Not long ago, the rise of social media inspired great optimism about its potential for flattening access to economic and political opportunity, enabling collective action, and facilitating new forms of expression. Its increasingly widespread use ushered in a wave of commentary and scholarship seeking to meld wellestablished bodies of knowledge on mass media, economics, and social movements with the affordances of this new communication technology. Several political upheavals and an election later, the outlook in both the popular press and scholarly discussions is decidedly less optimistic. Facebook and Twitter are more likely to be discussed as incubators of “fake news” and propaganda than as tools for empowerment and social change. The resulting research focus has changed, too, with scholars looking to earlier literatures on misperceptions and persuasion for insight into the challenges of the present. The terms “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “propaganda” are sometimes used interchangeably, with shifting and overlapping definitions. All three concern false or misleading messages spread under the guise of informative content, whether in the form of elite communication, online messages, advertising, or published articles. For the purposes of this chapter, we define misinformation as constituting a claim that contradicts or distorts common understandings of verifiable facts. This is distinct conceptually from rumors or conspiracy theories, whose definitions do not hinge on the truth value of the claims being made. Instead, rumors are understood as claims whose power arises from social transmission itself (Berinsky 2015). Conspiracy theories have specific characteristics, such as the belief that a hidden group of powerful individuals exerts control over some aspect of society (Sunstein and Vermeule 2009).