Disinformation

Alan D. Jagolinzer and Sander van der Linden highlight a dangerous trend of influencers who deliberately target corporations with disinformation, called “rage farming.” The authors use United Airlines to illustrate the damage this can cause to a business and argue that corporations should counter rage farming with proactive messaging rather than staying silent.

Ashutosh Bhagwat argues in new research that expecting social media platforms to serve as gatekeepers for the “truth” flounders on economic, organizational, and democratic grounds. In fact, the end of media gatekeepers and elite control over public discourse may be what is necessary to reinvigorate the marketplace of ideas and reduce political polarization.

In new research, Arseniy Samsonov builds a model showing how having available to the public a multitude of media outlets and social media platforms would not help reduce misinformation from politicians. Rather, monopolistic power could enable these outlets to retain control over the narratives around the information that these politicians provide to journalists and platforms in exchange for publicity and coverage, thus reducing misinformation.

Will increasing the liability of internet platforms mitigate disinformation? Economists weighed in on the effects of limiting or repealing protections for Big Tech through a recent survey from the Forum for the Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets—previously the Initiative on Global Markets—at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

In response to rising concerns about political disinformation, governments have introduced a slew of interventions. Federico Vaccari warns in new research that these interventions...

Online influencers aren’t in the business of promoting just products anymore. New research finds that micro-influencers are increasingly used to spread political messages and...

As it turns out, a majority of the American public is not bad at identifying disinformation. But as the 2020 election nears, the online...

A peculiar feature of WhatsApp groups has made the spread of misinformation much easier. We need better design guidelines for platforms like WhatsApp, ones...