Conspicuous Cognition

I have written many highly critical essays on how the topic of “misinformation” is approached within social science and popular discourse. Briefly, I think:

If misinformation is defined narrowly (i.e. as very clear-cut falsehoods and fabrications), conventional wisdom greatly exaggerates its prevalence and harms.

If misinformation is defined expansively (i.e. including any content that is somehow misleading), misinformation researchers tend to be naïve about the challenges of detecting it reliably and impartially.

This week, Nature, one of the world’s top scientific journals, published a short commentary by a group of leading misinformation researchers. Titled “Misinformation poses a bigger threat to democracy than you might think”, it addresses three criticisms of misinformation research:

“[1] that the threat has been overblown; [2] that classifying information as false is generally problematic because the truth is difficult to determine; and [3] that countermeasures might violate democratic principles because people have a right to believe and express what they want.”

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