Misinformation, Disinformation, and Online Propaganda

Guess, Andrew M.; Lyons, Benjamin A.

doi:10.1017/9781108890960.003

Cited by 131 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 521 publications

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“…This dubious honor reflects the large impact fake news—false information distributed as if it is real news—has had on economic, political, and social discourse in the last few years. But fake news is just one form of misinformation, which also includes disinformation, rumors, propaganda, and conspiracy theories (see Guess & Lyons, 2020). Misinformation poses a serious threat to democracy because it can make it harder for citizens to make informed political choices and hold politicians accountable for their actions, foster social conflict, and undercut trust in important institutions.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Political Psychology in the Digital (mis)Information age: A Model of News Belief and Sharing

Bavel

Harris

Pärnamets

et al. 2021

Social Issues Policy Review

124

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Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Political Psychology in the Digital (mis)Information age: A Model of News Belief and Sharing

Bavel

Harris

Pärnamets

et al. 2021

Social Issues Policy Review

124

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Indeed, a goal of contemporary social media disinformation campaigns is to lead unsuspecting targets to spread the deceptive messages on their own. We follow Guess and Lyons (2020) in defining misinformation "as constituting a claim that contradicts or distorts common understandings of verifiable facts" (p. 10) and Tucker et al (2018) in defining disinformation as a subset of misinformation that is "deliberately propagated false information" (p. 3, n. 1).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Source alerts can reduce the harms of foreign disinformation

2021

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Social media companies have begun to use content-based alerts in their efforts to combat mis- and disinformation, including fact-check corrections and warnings of possible falsity, such as “This claim about election fraud is disputed.” Another harm reduction tool, source alerts, can be effective when a hidden foreign hand is known or suspected. This paper demonstrates that source alerts (e.g., “Determined by Twitter to be a Russian government account”) attached to pseudonymous posts can reduce the likelihood that users will believe and share political messages.

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“…The same applies to disinformation research (Guess and Lyons 2020). Here, too, again, the Arab Spring serves as an important but sombre historical milestone.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…A few words must be written about terminology, which is still debated in academia and elsewhere (Choraśa et al 2021;Guess and Lyons 2020;Horne 2021). There is a good reason for these debates; it is difficult to make demarcations between disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, fake news, hoaxes, conspiracy theories, satire, memes, deep fakes, and whatever else the Internet and its subcultures continuously invent-together with intelligence agencies and other governmental bodies.…”

Section: Framingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparative Study of Online Disinformation and Offline Protests

Ruohonen¹

2021

Preprint

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In early 2021 the United States Capitol in Washington was stormed during a riot and violent attack. Although the storming was merely an instance in a long sequence of events, it provided a testimony for many observers who had claimed that online actions, including the propagation of disinformation, have offline consequences. Soon after, a number of papers have been published about the relation between online disinformation and offline violence, among other related relations. Hitherto, the effects upon political protests have been unexplored. This paper thus evaluates such effects with a time series cross-sectional sample of 125 countries in a period between 2000 and 2019. The results are mixed. Based on Bayesian multi-level regression modeling, (i) there indeed is an effect between online disinformation and offline protests, but the effect is partially meditated by political polarization. The results are clearer in a sample of countries belonging to the European Economic Area. With this sample, (ii) offline protest counts increase from online disinformation disseminated by domestic governments, political parties, and politicians as well as by foreign governments. Furthermore, (iii) Internet shutdowns and governmental monitoring of social media tend to decrease the counts. With these results, the paper contributes to the blossoming disinformation research by modeling the impact of disinformation upon offline phenomenon. The contribution is important due to the various policy measures planned or already enacted.

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Misinformation, Disinformation, and Online Propaganda

Cited by 131 publications

References 521 publications

Political Psychology in the Digital (mis)Information age: A Model of News Belief and Sharing

Political Psychology in the Digital (mis)Information age: A Model of News Belief and Sharing

Source alerts can reduce the harms of foreign disinformation

A Comparative Study of Online Disinformation and Offline Protests

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