While disinformation has been comfortably living in the beautiful and diverse geographies of the Global South for many decades, its grandchild, digital disinformation, is undoubtedly much younger, with not a single white hair yet visible. Indeed, digital disinformation is a 21st-century phenomenon, propelled by the emergence of the Internet and the seemingly unavoidable birth of social media with multiple global tentacles, each with its own brain, thus imitating most octopuses. Digital here refers to the fact that the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of disinformation is accomplished via digital tools and means. However, that does not imply that digital technologies are to blame for the generation of disinformation . At best, new technologies are catalysts facilitating the effusion of disinformation tout court.
Good old-fashioned disinformation (GOFAD) was primarily the domain of governments and influential media outlets, which had almost unlimited access to expensive and sometimes scarce means of communication. They often acted in sync, especially in the Global South. The same can be said about propaganda, by the way . Nowadays, access to communications means with quasi-global reach is available to billions of people at both ends of the disinformation chain—production and consumption. GOFAD’s nefarious monopoly has thus been shattered. Information and disinformation can now come from almost any corner.
Big Tech social media business models, essentially based on advertisement, provide fertile ground for harvesting all sorts of (dis)information. In principle, quantity trumps quality, so the more stuff flows through their pipes and in and out their clouds, the merrier they are. Of course, most have set moderation teams trying to tame the untamable beast, regardless of whip length. However, such measures are usually geared to cover large markets where English is dominant. The other 6.5 billion who cannot complain in English—half connected to the Internet— cannot swim towards such digital lifesavers .
That brings us back to the four disinformation research gaps detailed in the previous post. We surely need an analytical framework to help grasp the complexities of disinformation production and diffusion in the Global South.
The 2016 information research shift from psychology journals to media and communications disinformation academic research identified by Madrid-Morales et al. received an enormous boost with the publication the following year of the Information Disorder Framework (IDF) report by the Council of Europe . IDF eventually became the gold standard for studying the disinformation hydra. The question is if such a framework alone provides the necessary components to capture the specificities of Global South disinformation analytically.
IDF comprises a triad of triads—yet no traces of Hegelian logic can be found here. The first triad identifies three types of disinformation derived from the intersection between false and harmful information. While misinformation is simply false information, disinformation is both false and harmful. Information that is harmful only is classified as malformation and includes leaks, hate speech and harassment. Nevertheless, the latter plays a relatively minor role in the report and framework. The second triad involves the relationship between actors and the message. An agent creates a message that is then shared with an interpreter of its content. The latter can redistribute the original message. The last triad addresses the (dis)information deployment process and includes creation, production, and distribution.
The critical question is how to differentiate between false and harmful information analytically. The framework posits the agent generating misinformation or disinformation processes as the prime mover. The agent’s intention thus decides where the chips fall. Interestingly, such emphasis is closer to older psychological disinformation (and propaganda) studies than to recent media and communications research. In any case, the agent’s original intent might change from disinformation to misinformation (no harm achieved) or vice versa while it travels across the many networks and communication channels. For example, some interpreters redistributing the message all around can genuinely believe the information is accurate and share with that intention.
On the other hand, an agent seeking economic gain, one of the four agent motivations mentioned in the report, might not even care if the information is false, harmful or both. Her goal is solely to gain additional income, which is precisely how so-called disinformation “factories” and click farms operate . Income generation or profit maximization are critical drivers in such cases. Agents and for-hire interpreters have no incentive to check the outcomes of their lustrous interventions. Once payment arrives, they rapidly move to the following deed.
In this light, the borders among the three types of information proposed are fuzzy at best. It is thus tricky to precisely categorize one particular information event into a single category. For example, there is no guarantee that misformation will ever cause harm, regardless of the agent’s original intention. In my view, such vicissitudes substantially reduce IDF’s explanatory power.
The source of the problem stems from using false and harmful as categorical percolators. False refers to the nature of the message itself and is thus an informational trait. On the other hand, harmful is a function of the actual impact it might have on any given person(s), institution(s), or organization(s), regardless of the agent’s original intention. In this light, it is possible to argue that the framework should focus more on impact and less on intent.
Furthermore, an agent’s intentionality is challenging to uncover and measure. Not surprisingly, such an approach rolls the red carpet to renewed psychological research, still pervasive today . Moreover, while not claiming this openly, IDF has universal applicability. It thus should prove effective, regardless of local context and history, as individual agents and interpreters operate globally under the same motivational assumptions. As pointed out by other critics, that implies that issues such as colonialism, racism, xenophobia, sexism and so on fall beyond its scope .
A critical issue here is that the micro level of the analysis completely overshadows the macro one. Focusing on individuals is undoubtedly essential. Intentionality is indeed part of the problem. But it is not necessarily the most relevant or the one with more explanatory power. In that light, introducing a political economy approach to foster Global South disinformation research can help harness the gaps already identified.
Raul
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