I wrote a piece for the Financial Times about why I think we need to focus squarely on this as we head into a big election year.
My (naively unworkable) working title when I submitted it was “It’s the elite, stupid: stop gaslighting the public about where consequential misinformation comes from”.
A few links below to evidence that has informed my view.
First, misinformation often comes from the top. Multiple studies have documented political actors’ role, e.g. the work of Yochai Benkler et al on network propaganda, Jonathan Ong and Ross Tapsell on fake news work models, Neelanjan Sircar’s work on disinformation as a type of state-sponsored violence and much more (I mean, look at a history book).
Second, what is crucial is not volume but influence. Hugo Mercier and others have pointed out, attempts at mass persuasion mostly fail!. But one thing that often influence people is elite cues from politicians they support.
Third, to state the obvious, some politicians sometimes weaponize false and misleading information for their own purposes. It’s easy to pin this on “populists” – there may be something to this – but it can come from establishment types too – Blair, Bush, Kennedy, Reagan, etc.
Fourth, faced with attempts to limit politicians’ ability to use misinformation, we see countless attacks on independent journalists, as well as on fact-checkers and researchers, plus attempts to legally prevent platforms from subjecting politicians to the same content moderation they apply to you or I.
Fifth, we don’t need to “forget” technology, as the FT headline suggests, but look at root causes – how political elites make use of tech, and how tech companies react to this use, sometimes treating them differently as a matter of policy, sometimes perhaps for pragmatic reasons.
In summary – misinformation often comes from the top, elite cues are more consequential than more misinformation added to what is already a vast ocean of content, populists may be particularly likely to use this for political purposes but they are not alone, and some politicians want to be allowed to act as they please. There is a lot of research on misinformation – if you are interested in more, great and warmly recommended resources include the “Critical Disinformation Studies” syllabus from CITAP, Brendan Nyhan’s “Political Misinformation” syllabus as well as (both of these are pretty US-focused) for example the edited volume “Disinformation in the Global South” for a wider view.
rasmuskleisnielsen.net 