Divide & Conquer: Critical Informatics Approaches to Disinformation

Abstract

In this paper, we use a critical informatics approach to investigate institutional disinformation around 2022–23 labor organizing at three higher education institutions: Rutgers University, Temple University, and the University of California. Our contribution to the study of disinformation is the application of critical informatics perspectives that attend to structural power dynamics of disinformation within an institutional context. Understanding the political economic dynamics of disinformation and how these dynamics function can help more solidly contextualize and clarify how and why disinformation exists across different information systems, so that solutions to this social and institutional problem of disinformation can be more appropriately addressed and understood. The study describes disinformation tactics employed by institutional leaders during higher education labor organizing including: non‐performative commitments to “community”, legal threats, misleading victories, and elite capture.