Mis- and disinformation onlinea taxonomy of solutions

Abstract

The premise of this dissertation is that 2016 was the year that societies began to understand the dangers of online/mis disinformation and decided to fund and implement solutions even though they had not been fully researched or tested. Many of the fixes were, in fact, based on the financial interests or belief systems of the people doing them. Facebook wanted to avoid regulation so it funded fact-checking and put the onus on audiences to become more media savvy/news literate. Journalists thought they could help the problem of online mis/disinformation by putting more effort into getting to know their audiences. Repressive regimes saw an opening to ban speech they didn’t like. We provide a taxonomy of the variety of initiatives aimed at solving the problem, with the objective of enhancing our understanding of the strengths and limitations of each. Our analysis is set in the context of the academic literature on the problems of propaganda and dis/misinformation and media trust and we provide historical context for many of the solutions. The “solutions” we compare and contrast in this paper include fact-checking initiatives and projects by journalists to promote community engagement, media literacy programs, technical fixes such as using as natural language processing/AI to block false and/or inflammatory content and finally government regulation. We discuss each solution, examining the intellectual and research basis for each as well as which groups have supported the different possible fixes and why. Drawing on dozens of interviews with funders, journalists and regulators as well as archival material and including an exhaustive bibliography, this dissertation looks at the universe of solutions in an organized, structured way and concludes with policy proposals to help promote democracy.