Misinformation

Key people

• Patricia KingoriKenyan born British African sociologist
• Sajjad FazelCanadian researcher
• Stefan BrennerDisinformation researcher

Timeline

• 1587During the summer of 1587, continental Europe anxiously awaited news as the Spanish Armada sailed to fight the English.
• 2005In November 2005, Chris Hansen on Dateline NBC claimed that law enforcement officials estimate 50,000 predators are online at any moment.
• 2016Social media platforms allow for easy spread of misinformation, and misinformation was a major talking point during the 2016 U.S.
• 2018More than half of the world's population had access to the Internet in the beginning of 2018.
• 2019Companion Proceedings of the 2019 World Wide Web Conference.

Read

• The Flying Saucers Are RealDonald E. Keyhoe · 1950Book
• The dictionary of misinformationTom Burnam · 1975Book
• The Experts speakChristopher Cerf · 1984Book
• Memoirs and MisinformationJim Carrey · 2020Book

Listen

• Dis/Mis: Exploring Misinformation In Modern MediaImpressPodcast
• The Misinformation ReportRiddhima DavePodcast
• Misinformation MachineMisinformation MachinePodcast
• Misinformation: Through the Eyes of the PastAbbie GilesPodcast

Voices to follow

• Sajjad Fazel@SajjadFazel · XCanadian researcher

By the numbers

• 73.6Internet users (%) — global, 2025 (World Bank)
• 111.5Mobile subscriptions / 100 — global, 2025 (World Bank)

Debates

• Who bears primary responsibility for combating misinformation?One view: Social media platforms should be held accountable for content shared on their sites. · Another: Individuals must be educated to critically evaluate information and sources themselves.Open question
• Should governments regulate online misinformation?One view: Government regulation is necessary to protect public discourse and national security from harmful falsehoods. · Another: Government intervention could lead to censorship and infringe upon freedom of speech.Open question
• Is misinformation more prevalent and impactful on social media than in traditional media?One view: Social media algorithms amplify engagement, often prioritizing sensational or false content for wider spread. · Another: Traditional media outlets can also spread misinformation, sometimes with greater perceived authority and reach.Open question

Glossary

• MisinformationIncorrect or misleading information spread without malicious intent.
• DisinformationDeliberately false information created and spread to deceive or manipulate.
• Fact-checkingThe process of verifying the accuracy of statements, claims, and news stories.
• Filter bubbleAn intellectual isolation that occurs when an algorithm shows a user only information consistent with their past views.
• Echo chamberAn environment where a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, reinforcing them.
• DeepfakeSynthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness using AI.

Careers

Roles this can lead toward

Student research

Published policy papers by One Young India delegates — every delegate leaves published under their own name.

• Separating Real and AI Media – Difficulties and SolutionsK.V. Siva Surya
• The Public Persona Trap: US College Admissions and Social MediaGunika Chaudhary
• Understanding misinformation in India: The case for a meaningful regulatory approach for social media platformsGandharv Dhruv Madan
• The Evolution of Social Media Marketing: From Engagement to CommerceHimanshi Bhutoria

Threads 7

Where this connects to other fields — and why it's worth knowing.

• Orthodoxy and Heresy Religion

  Ban an idea and you basically put a spotlight on it; 'forbidden' makes people curious to find out what's being hidden. The Inquisition learned this the hard way, and social media relives it constantly. Deleting a post can make it spread further, a trap now called the Streisand effect.

• Philosophy of Science Philosophy

  Philosophers spent ages trying to draw a clean line between real science and fake science, and never fully cracked it; they call it the demarcation problem. A fact-checker faces that exact unsolved puzzle every single day, deciding what's legit and what's junk. The ancient philosophy problem is now a live battle in your news feed.

• Historiography History

  Historians cracked fake documents two centuries ago: check where a source came from, whether it contradicts itself, whether the details fit its era. Those are exactly the fact-checking moves we now desperately need against internet fakes. The skill isn't new tech; it's an old scholar's craft suddenly demanded of everyone with a phone.

• Procedure & Evidence Law

  The scariest thing about deepfakes isn't the fakes, it's what they do to real evidence. Once everyone knows video can be faked, a guilty person caught on camera can just shrug and cry 'that's a deepfake.' It's called the 'liar's dividend,' and it poisons the whole idea of proof that courts and journalists depend on.

• Atheism Religion

  Your brain is a pattern-and-agent detector, always asking 'who's behind this?' That same wiring that once conjured gods in thunderstorms now conjures secret cabals behind every news event. A mind hunting for hidden plotters will find them whether they exist or not, which is why believing in gods and believing in conspiracies run on the exact same hardware.

• AI & Writing Literature

  When a machine can spit out endless smooth, human-sounding text for free, lying becomes basically costless: you can flood the internet with fakes in seconds. So the thing that suddenly gets rare and precious isn't information, it's trust. Once anyone can fake anything, knowing who to believe becomes the whole game.

• Memory and Its Failures Psychology

  Hear a lie enough times and your brain starts to feel it's true, that's the 'illusory-truth effect'. Worse, correcting a lie can backfire by making people hear it again. Fake news exploits the same shaky, rewritable memory that already makes eyewitnesses in court so unreliable.