What do we actually know about modern disinformation?
This is an intentionally broad question with a lot of different angles. It's also a question that's naturally hard to get solid grounding on now that nearly everything gets painted as false, misleading, or disingenuous by at least someone.
Normally in my ask threads I throw out a lot of potential talking points, but in this case I want to leave the question open, for people to take it in whichever direction they wish: What do we actually know about modern disinformation, especially related to (but not limited to) online spaces? What are some real, genuine takeaways we can hang our hats on?
Also, a point of clarity: disinformation here does NOT strictly refer to high-level government propaganda and can include something as low-level as, say, an influencer not disclosing product sponsorship to their followers. I'm interested in distributed falsehoods of any caliber.
Chomsky and Herman's propoganda model is still more or less a comprehensive view of modern propaganda and disinformation. It was published in 1988, but even now in the social media age it holds true.
Much ink has been spilled over the 'fake news' problem, and it is almost astonishing how nearly all of it I've seen is written as if the author has never ever heard of Manufacturing Consent, much less realises how it fits into this 'new' world of Twitter trolls.
This book has been languishing on my to-read list for well over a decade now. I think it's high time I finally prioritize it and actually give it my attention.
The part of it laying out the propoganda model is only like 50-100 pages. I've said elsewhere on this site that it's got the highest
(information / words)ratio of anything I've read.This is probably my favorite thing written recently about disinformation: The Toxins We Carry - Disinformation is polluting our media environment. Facts won’t save us.
I think it's fascinating to consider disinformation as something more like pollution, where the intent behind creating or spreading it doesn't necessarily matter and it can still have major "downstream" effects, or even make the problem worse by trying to expose it.
This was a really great read. Its overarching ecology metaphor is both resonant and illuminating.
Offtopic, but that has to be the narrowest article I have ever seen outside a mobile site. On my ultrawide screen it feels like it barely takes up 1/8th of the width. Thank God for Firefox reader mode. :/
As far as I can tell disinformation has been around for a long time, but the more recent development is both in how fast they can spread and how fast it can find new promoters through the power of the internet. Previously both deliberate and accidental misinformation was still limited by geography, as both word-of-mouth and printed information needed to be physically transported. Nowadays a bad or deliberately false piece of information can get signal boosted by pretty much anyone with the necessary access.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyop0d30UqQ
Vladislav Surkov's "Nonlinear Warfare"
Speaking of Adam Curtis, his classic documentaries The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares are well worth watching IMO, as is his more recent HyperNormalisation.
And another person who has similarly been studying and breaking down disinformation over the decades is Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media is a decent introduction to him and his ideas, but ultimately it's his books on politics that I would recommend reading, and his lectures and interviews that are also well worth seeking out IMO.
Thanks for suggesting those documentaries!
I think this link for HyperNormalization would be better: https://archive.org/details/HyperNormalisation
(The youtube link you posted seems to be 6 minutes shorter than the version found on BBC).
NP... and neat, I never even thought to check archive.org for them. Apparently Manufacturing Consent, the book and documentary, are on there too.
I recently read Peter Pomerantsev's Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible which is about Russian surreality. This clip is a good and succinct companion piece to it. Thanks for sharing.
Awesome, I was unaware there was a book discussing this philosophy. Adding it to my list.