On Disinformation How To Fight For Truth And Protect Democracy

This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code). Uploaded by TV Archive on April 23, 2024 A powerful, pocket-sized citizen’s guide on how to fight back against the disinformation campaigns that are imperiling American democracy, from the bestselling author of Post-Truth and How to Talk to a Science Denier. The effort to destroy facts and make America ungovernable didn’t come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of seventy years of strategic denialism.

In On Disinformation, Lee McIntyre shows how the war on facts began, and how ordinary citizens can fight back against the scourge of disinformation that is now threatening the very fabric of our society. Drawing on his twenty years of experience as a scholar of science denial, McIntyre explains how autocrats wield disinformation to manipulate a populace and deny obvious realities, why the best way to combat disinformation... McIntyre takes readers through the history of strategic denialism to show how we arrived at this precarious political moment and identifies the creators, amplifiers, and believers of disinformation. Along the way, he also demonstrates how today’s “reality denial” follows the same flawed blueprint of the “five steps of science denial” used by climate deniers and anti-vaxxers; shows how Trump has emulated disinformation... On Disinformation lays out ten everyday practical steps that we can take as ordinary citizens—from resisting polarization to pressuring our Congresspeople to regulate social media—as well as the important steps our government (if we... Compact, easy-to-read (and then pass on to a friend), and never more urgent, On Disinformation does nothing less than empower us with the tools and knowledge needed to save our republic from autocracy before...

Silver Winner, Nautilus Book Awards, Digital Information, 2024 Last updated 1 week ago ago. Our resources are updated regularly but please keep in mind that links, programs, policies, and contact information do change. For centuries, the guiding philosophy for free speech has been the “marketplace of ideas” – a belief that in a free and open competition of thought, truth will ultimately prevail over falsehood. So what happens when that marketplace is no longer a level playing field? The digital age, with its social media platforms and powerful algorithms, has created an information ecosystem fundamentally different from anything the nation’s founders could have imagined.

This new environment, driven by engagement rather than accuracy, has proven to be an astonishingly efficient engine for the spread of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. This collision between America’s foundational legal principles of free speech and the unprecedented challenge of digital falsehoods raises critical questions. What does the First Amendment truly protect? What are the tangible harms caused by misinformation? How do we balance free speech with the need to combat dangerous lies? Posted November 23, 2025 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

How many Trump administration executive orders, policy announcements, or social media blasts have you heard about this week? Can you even begin to name them all? U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have been said to engage in a strategy called “flooding the zone”—releasing a great deal of information with the goal of distracting the media and the public. (Almost certainly, they are not the only politicians to do this. For example, Boris Johnson’s London mayoral campaigns were said to use the “dead cat strategy,” shocking the public with an announcement to distract them from news they preferred they not see.)

The U.S. political application of this term, which was borrowed from the name of a tactic used in American football, can be traced to former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who said, “All we have to do... They'll bite on one, and we'll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang.” Flooding the zone might work as a political strategy, but it takes a psychological toll on media consumers. For example, polls show that 65% of U.S. adults have felt the need to reduce their media consumption because of information overload and ensuing feelings of fatigue. Moreover, experimental research has found that a habit of closely following political news is a chronic stressor, often leading to negative emotions (Ford et al., 2023).

But information overload doesn’t just undermine our psychological well-being; it can also undermine democracy. In a recent article, “Critical ignoring when information abundance is detrimental to democracy,” psychology researchers Stephan Lewandowsky and Ralph Hertwig (2025) outlined why information overload harms democracy and provided a strategy on how we... First, the authors share findings that information abundance causes misinformation because our ability to differentiate truth from falsehood decreases when we are overwhelmed and in a hurry. In fact, the research shows that overwhelmed people are more likely to share “things that are partially or completely untrue.” Why? Essentially, we’re more likely to share the splashy findings which are, in turn, more likely to be misinformation. As the researchers explain, this information abundance harms democracy via several mechanisms, ranging from “triggering misinformation cascades to generating coping strategies that result in reduced political accountability.”

News outlets, along with everyone else in the world, are sharing their facts, opinions and advice on COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. With the overwhelming information that’s available, how do you know how to sift through and find only what is accurate and necessary to keep you and your community safe? Arizona State University researchers provide a few quick tips to protect yourself from fake or misleading news during this time. “If it's coming through your Twitter, Facebook or Instagram feed, don't think of it as information from those platforms, because it’s not,” said Scott Ruston, a researcher in ASU’s Global Security Initiative. "Ask yourself, 'Who is this coming from and what is the background?' If the article you read makes accusations, ask yourself, 'Who does this benefit? What’s the underlying source material?' For example, the U.S.

Department of State recently identified disinformation campaigns about the coronavirus in Europe," Ruston said. In those cases, strident claims about dangers to residents were made in order to undermine the government. “When someone asks you where you heard something, if your first inclination is to say Twitter, you need to stop and check because Twitter itself tells you nothing,” said Kristy Roschke, co-director of the... A consensus view holds that social media benefits something called “populism”, an amorphous political force involving anger towards “elites” and “the establishment” on behalf of the more virtuous masses. The evidence for this view consists mainly of the suspicious correlation between social media’s emergence and the worldwide rise of populism, and the undeniable fact that populists seem to perform uniquely well on social... Because the establishment in modern liberal democracies is overwhelmingly small-l liberal (universalist, pluralist, procedural), such populist movements are typically illiberal, especially on the populist right (MAGA, Reform UK, Rassemblement National, Alternative für Deutschland, etc).

So, social media’s support for populism goes hand in hand with its threat to a reigning liberal order in the West that many thought or at least hoped marked the end of history. Why does social media have these consequences? And if, like me, you are a liberal who opposes populism, what can be done about it? Part 1 argues that the main reason social media benefits populism is that it destroys elite gatekeeping, providing a mass media platform for popular ideas historically stigmatised and marginalised by establishment elites. Part 2 then outlines several reasons why we should nevertheless resist moves for more elite gatekeeping on social media. Not only are such efforts likely to make things worse, but the decline of elite gatekeeping has had many beneficial consequences, and the negative consequences, although real, are often overstated.

Disinformation is false or misleading information deliberately spread to deceive people,[1][2][3][4][5] or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm.[6] Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ... In contrast, misinformation refers to inaccuracies that stem from inadvertent error.[10] Misinformation can be used to create disinformation when known misinformation is purposefully and intentionally disseminated.[11] "Fake news" has sometimes been categorized as a... The English word disinformation comes from the application of the Latin prefix dis- to information making the meaning "reversal or removal of information". The rarely used word had appeared with this usage in print at least as far back as 1887.[15][16][17][18] Some consider it a loan translation of the Russian дезинформация, transliterated as dezinformatsiya,[19][1][2] apparently derived from the title of a KGB black propaganda department.[20][1][21][19] Soviet planners in the 1950s defined disinformation as "dissemination (in... Disinformation first made an appearance in dictionaries in 1985, specifically, Webster's New College Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary.[23] In 1986, the term disinformation was not defined in Webster's New World Thesaurus or New...

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