Conspicuous Cognition
A recent article by Kai Kupferschmidt explores “the five biggest challenges facing misinformation research.” The first challenge focuses on how to define misinformation, which “matters because it is the first step in determining how pervasive misinformation is and how much impact it has.”
When misinformation research exploded in prominence in 2016 after Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, much of the focus was on fabricated news stories published by disreputable websites (“fake news”). However, it quickly became apparent that such content is relatively rare and not very impactful. In response to this discovery, many have argued that the meaning of “misinformation” should be expanded to encompass more content.
For example, some researchers suggest “misinformation” should refer to “any information that is false”, which would include wrong opinions in addition to fabricated news stories. And some go even further. Kupferschmidt’s article quotes the computational social scientist Jevin West, who observes that “there’s plenty of examples, where things are true, but they are completely misleading, which is a form of misinformation”, as well as misinformation researcher Kate Starbird, who
sees a more fundamental problem with current definitions: They tend to regard misinformation as individual, atomic units of information, such as an article or a tweet. But that overlooks the bigger picture of disinformation… Disinformation campaigns often work by selectively amplifying certain pieces of news, all or most of which can be true, Starbird says. “Disinformation is not a piece of content. It’s a strategy.”
