Too Big to Fail? Reforming Disinformation Studies from the Inside Out

Disinformation studies is here to stay. For one, the field is by now firmly entrenched in various academic disciplines. At the same time, funding bodies and governments have devoted significant financial resources to the study of mis- and disinformation, while journalists continue to display a keen interest in the topic not least given a multitude of crises which regularly bring the topic back into focus. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Despite the justified critiques lobbied against it, many of them outlined in the call for this conference, disinformation studies—understood here as the loose assortment of researchers, activists, journalists, and policy makers devoted to the study of the creation, distribution, and reception of misleading information—has arguably had both positive and negative effects on society.

The most evident positive effect of the emergence of disinformation studies is the mobilisation of wider society around the topic and the dangers arising from dis- and misinformation during elections, pandemics, or various conflicts. From the multiple fact-checking initiatives present in over 100 countries (Meta, 2021), to the WHO Infodemiology Conference (Calleja et al. 2021), terms such as ‘disinformation studies’ and ‘infodemiology’ have also become effective trading zones (Bensaude Vincent, 2014: 250) which allow for different stakeholders—in this case, academics, journalists, funders, policymakers and the wider public—to communicate with each other and investigate topics which clearly call for interdisciplinary perspectives.?

Unfortunately, there have also been various undesirable consequences. While a dilution of scientific quality is one possible outcome of any rallying around a topic (Simon and Camargo, 2021), regardless of whether it is disinformation or applied mathematics, the surge of interest around the former has also resulted in concrete political actions, with work sometimes based on questionable premises and methods shaping policies and political decisions in various countries (see e.g. Novak, 2020; The Economist, 2021; Radu, 2020)

With mis-/disinformation studies ‘too big to fail’ the question is then what to do with this state of affairs in light of the obvious shortcomings of the field. As interested observers positioned largely at the margins of the field, we deem a ‘revolution’ of the same unlikely. Instead, the only feasible and pragmatic way forward is in our view reforms. Drawing on our conceptual criticism of the recent ‘infodemic’, we have the following suggestions that might contribute to pushing disinformation studies as a whole onto firmer ground.

We should ask:

1) Who is mis-/disinformation studies for? What agenda does the field serve?

The heightened attention around its subject matter places the field of disinformation studies in a unique position: whatever counts as mis-/dis-information will be regulated as such. This extra pressure means that it is of fundamental importance for scholars to be mindful not just of whether their research is useful at all, but who it is useful for, and for them to do what. For instance, computer science approaches to disinformation often focus on the automated detection of fact-checkable information. This has certainly been a prolific area of investigation, but it is ultimately focused on generating academic publications, benchmarks, algorithms, and detection tools of all kinds. It is less concerned (and often not concerned) with how those tools might be used, or with who might be using them. This point is intimately connected to the point below about the wider impact of the field.

?2) What is the wider impact of mis-/disinformation studies?

Despite the positive effects of a rallying cry for countering disinformation, crisis and emergency discourse such as ‘misinformation crisis’, ‘information wars’ or ‘infodemic’ can not only obfuscate the complexity of a situation, they can also create an atmosphere of ‘moral panic’ (Jungherr and Schroeder, 2021), which can contribute to a delegitimisation of democratic processes and institutions, and potentially provide cover for political leaders keen to curb human rights. As discussed above, various international leaders and governments have used the pandemic and the alleged flood of misinformation or ‘fake news’ as an excuse to pass laws that effectively curtail fundamental human rights, such as freedom of speech or press freedom (Simon and Camargo, 2021). As a result, there needs to be a reckoning with the impact mis- /disinformation studies as a field has, especially in light of the problematic quality of some work in this area.

Furthermore, we should:

3) Critically assess relationships with funders, policymakers, and journalists

Studies such as Radu (2020), assessing the impact of the increased attention towards countering disinformation, are still very rare. The field of disinformation studies is likely to benefit from becoming an object of studies of that kind. A thorough self-assessment is needed—one conducted by anthropologists, network scientists, sociologists, and data scientists, aiming to reveal the groups of actors and core tenets of the field, and shining a light on the flows of influence, values, and priorities between philanthropists, funders, academics, policymakers and the media.

4) Challenge the ahistoricism of mis- and disinformation studies?

One of the key problems of mis- and disinformation studies is its lack of historical perspective, as for example Chris W. Anderson has argued. According to Anderson, ‘the field needs to be more conscious of its own history, particularly its historical conceptual predecessors [in propaganda studies and behavioural science]. This includes, as Anderson goes on to state, the need to ‘take a normative position on what a good information environment would look like from the point of view of political theory’ something that, so far, has not been expressed clearly enough (Anderson, 2021).?

Also related is the notion that information is situated: mis- and disinformation, propaganda, and other forms of communication are inherently contextual, and any scholarship on the topic should reflect that. By this, we mean that disinformation studies should go beyond looking at Twitter, or at the Global North, or at English-speaking countries. Widening perspectives, case studies, and sources of scholarship will result in methodologically stronger papers, which connects to the next point below.

5) Improve mis- and disinformation studies’ rigour

While this can take (and should take) many different forms, one particularly promising avenue here could be adversarial collaborations (Penn Arts & Sciences, 2021). We believe that mis- and disinformation studies would benefit from such an approach, both in empirical and theoretical work. As things stand, the wider field of mis- and disinformation studies is composed of actors with widely differing viewpoints, something well encapsulated for example by the debates around the effects of mis- and disinformation. Such good-faith collaborations between antagonistic camps might lead to better outcomes than the current gridlock often marked by ad hominem attacks and the somewhat credulous belief in the self-correcting nature of the scientific enterprise (which might be the case in the longue durée but often fails in the short term).

The ‘after’ of disinformation studies does not have to look like the present. Yet naturally, the main problem with reforming a field from the inside is that it requires uncomfortable choices by the involved actors which go against very strong incentives to keep things the same. In that sense, the pressure might come (or have to come) from external bodies such as funding agencies and national strategic programmes such as the UK National AI Strategy and the European Commission’s Action Plan Against Disinformation, but from other parts of the information ecosystem. Here, we hope to launch a discussion about these and other possible reforms as well as ways to implement them. ??

References

Anderson, C. W. (2021). Propaganda, misinformation, and histories of media techniques. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-64

Bensaude, Vincent. B. (2014) The politics of buzzwords at the interface of technoscience, market and society: the case of ‘public engagement in science’. Public Understanding of Science 23(3): 238–253.

Calleja, N., AbdAllah, A., Abad, N., Ahmed, N., Albarracin, D., Altieri, E., ... & Purnat, T. D. (2021). A public health research agenda for managing infodemics: Methods and results of the first WHO infodemiology conference. JMIR infodemiology, 1(1), e30979.?

Jungherr, A. and Schroeder, R. (2021) Disinformation and the structural transformations of the public arena: addressing the actual challenges to democracy. Social Media + Society 7(1): 1–21

Meta Journalism Project (2021) A Map of Meta's Global Third-Party Fact-Checking Partners. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/programs/third-party-fact-checking/partner-map (accessed 23 February 2022).

Novak, B. (2020) Hungary moves to end rule by decree, but Orban’s powers may stay. The New York Times, 16 June. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/world/europe/hungary-coronavirus-orban.html (accessed 27 July 2020).

Penn Arts & Sciences (2021), Adversarial Collaboration Project. Available at: https://web.sas.upenn.edu/adcollabproject/ (accessed 23 February 2022).?

Radu, R. (2020) Fighting the ‘Infodemic’: legal responses to COVID-19 disinformation. Social Media + Society 6(3): 1-4.?https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305120948190

The Economist (2021) Inconvenient truths: censorious governments are abusing “fake news” laws, 13 February. Available at: https://www.economist.com/international/2021/02/13/censoriousgovernments-are-abusing-fake-news-laws (accessed 26 February 2021).

Simon, F. M. (2020) Pivoting in times of the coronavirus. In: Keidl DK, Melamed L, Hediger V, et al. (eds) Pandemic Media: Preliminary Notes toward an Inventory. Lüneburg: Meson Press, pp. 61–67. https://pandemicmedia.meson.press/chapters/time-temporality/pivoting-in-times-of-the-coronavirus/

Simon, F. M., & Camargo, C. Q. (2021). Autopsy of a metaphor: The origins, use and blind spots of the ‘infodemic’. New Media & Society. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14614448211031908