Countering political disinformation

The circulation of political disinformation – used in this chapter as an umbrella term to refer to false or misleading information deliberately spread to influence public opinion and impact election outcomes (see, Wardle and Derakhshan 2017, for a discussion on terminology) – has long been seen as a significant challenge to the democratic process, as it can deprive electors from acquiring the necessary political knowledge to make informed decisions at the ballot box (Bennett and Livingston 2020). Political disinformation undermines trust in elections, fuels division and hate speech (Sablosky 2021), and leads to social and political unrest (Soto-Vásquez and Sánchez-Santos 2022). As Rid (2020) reminds us, disinformation has been a feature of international and domestic politics for a long time. In the last 100 years, there have been several waves of political disinformation, each of which has been preceded by the advent of a new form of information technology. For example, radio contributed to the globalization of disinformation during World War II after decades of quasi-artisanal information manipulation in the interwar period. The latest wave of political disinformation, the origin of which Rid situates in the 2010s, is marked by the widespread use of new digital technologies, from mobile phones to social media platforms.