Pdf Disagreement As A Way To Study Misinformation And Its Effects

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 5, 2025, 5:16 PM

pdf disagreement as a way to study misinformation and its effects

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It can lead to problems such as political Disagreements, loss of trust in institutions, and challenges in public health. Despite this importance, the definition of misinformation is often unclear and can vary widely among different groups. Many people think that misinformation is just about false facts, but its Effects can come from many sources, not just misinformation itself. This paper suggests that we should look at disagreement-conflicting Beliefs and attitudes-as a better way to study the problems caused by misinformation. The current focus on misinformation is too narrow and fails to capture the full range of problems it can cause. While misinformation deals with facts at an individual level, its effects are often influenced by social factors like Values, identities, and beliefs.

These broader issues are essential in shaping the effects that misinformation has on society. Identifying misinformation is subjective, making it hard to measure and assess. This subjectivity can lead to problems since misinformation usually carries a negative label, which can bias researchers' views. Disagreement is an essential part of misinformation effects, but misinformation itself is not always needed to create those effects. Disagreement can give insight into the limitations of current strategies used to combat misinformation. Measuring disagreement is easier and does not rely on subjective human judgment, which allows for automated analysis of misinformation effects.

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Experts consider misinformation a significant societal concern due to its associated problems like political polarization, erosion of trust, and public health challenges. However, these broad effects can occur independently of misinformation, illustrating a misalignment with the narrow focus of the prevailing misinformation concept. We propose using disagreement—conflicting attitudes and beliefs—as a more effective framework for studying these effects. This approach, for example, reveals the limitations of current misinformation interventions and offers a method to empirically test whether we are living in a post-truth era. Center for an Informed Public, Information School, University of Washington, USA Center for an Informed Public, Information School, University of Washington, USA

Experts and the public both consider misinformation a significant societal concern (Altay, Berriche, Heuer, et al., 2023; Ecker et al., 2024; McCorkindale, 2023), yet it remains a vague concept with inconsistent definitions (Adams et... These problems include polarization, erosion of institutions, problematic behavior, and individual and public health issues (Adams et al., 2023; Rocha et al., 2023; Tay et al., 2024). We refer to these problems as misinformation effects to indicate that they are assumed to be the effects of the spread of misinformation.1Based on our analysis, we should refer to these as disagreement effects. However, for readability, we will use misinformation effects throughout the paper. The gaps in prevailing definitions and theories of misinformation (Pasquetto et al., 2024) impact the analysis of misinformation effects (Altay, Berriche, & Acerbi, 2023), the development of intervention strategies (Aghajari et al., 2023), and... We propose here disagreement as a more effective framework for studying these effects.

Given the variety of definitions for misinformation (Adams et al., 2023; Krause et al., 2022), we focus on the prevailing conceptualization: false and misleading information about factual matters that—whether intentionally or unintentionally—leads to or... While misinformation focuses on factual matters consumed at the individual level, the misinformation effects involve and are shaped by normative and societal factors beyond misinformation itself, such as opinions, values, epistemic positions, social norms,... However, the primary focus in misinformation research remains on mitigating the spread of false and misleading information (Aghajari et al., 2023; e.g.,Kozyreva et al., 2024). Therefore, this is the standard against which we compare our proposed approach. In particular, the inclusion of misleading information makes identifying misinformation a highly context-sensitive task, often relying on a weak form of objectivity that can approach pure subjectivity (Krause et al., 2022; Uscinski, 2023). To clarify, we stand firmly behind scientific objectivity, viewing objectivity as epistemic rather than as metaphysical absolute value, borrowing from Frost-Arnold’s (2023) definition: “a measurement of the degree to which bias is managed within...

This subjectivity, combined with the conceptual misalignment, results in four key limitations when studying misinformation effects.

Pdf Disagreement As A Way To Study Misinformation And Its Effects

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