Jacob N. Shapiro and Sean Norton on September 10, 2024, wrote an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, with the headline, “Why Scholars Should Stop Studying ‘Misinformation’.” Their article was not propaganda per se, but the headline was ‘click bait’, and for what was a worthy article to read; nevertheless, the headline assertion was wrong. Scholars should not stop studying misinformation, and, indeed, should study all aspects of propaganda. Indeed, Jacob N. Shapiro’s and Sean Norton’s article leads to the very opposite conclusion of their headline assertion. Their argument is sound, and, so to summarise in their own words:
Disinformation refers to the purposeful use of false information to deliberately deceive others. Misinformation is false or misleading information spread without specific intent to deceive…
While the term “misinformation” may seem simple and self-evident at first glance, it is in fact highly ambiguous as an object of scientific study. It combines judgments about the factuality of claims with arguments about the intent behind their distribution, and inevitably leads scholars into hopelessly subjective territory. As a result, the pursuit of misinformation as a research topic ultimately makes it harder to answer critical questions about how changes to the information environment impact outcomes in the real world…
When scholars talk about “misinformation,” they are talking about activity generated by three very different social phenomena, each of which interacts with technology in distinct ways and creates a different kind of evidence trail.
The first is state-sponsored influence campaigns: countries reaching across borders to influence other countries’ politics with a combination of propaganda, true information presented out of context, and outright lies.
The second process is when bad actors, whether state-aligned or not, use conspiracy theories or false information to make political arguments in their own countries…
The third process is monetized falsehoods, often concerning medical information and contentious political topics…
Unfortunately, the medicalization of misinformation research led to scholarly agendas so broad and ambitious as to be impossible.
When academics and journalists refer to the subject as “hopelessly subjective territory” they have unwittingly spoken propaganda. Subjectivism is not ‘hopeless’, but just one tool in the toolbox. What such academics and journalists too easily forget is that they are too often speaking of narrow specialisation (the reference to “the medicalization of misinformation research”). This is where the propaganda problem lies in academia and journalism. What is missing is comprehensive education.
Too many academic managers are still promoting narrow specialisation which misleads, and resist the movement into interdisciplinary education and research.
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Neville Buch
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