Communicating Science in Times of Crisis. Группа авторов
(Garrett et al., 2019) or predatory behaviors such as grooming and sexual predation (Black et al., 2015; Burgess & Hartman, 2018; De Santisteban et al., 2018; Dietz, 2018; Gámez-Guadix et al., 2018; Lanning, 2018).
Table 2.5 Dismisinformation typology.
| Motive/Cause | Unintentionally Communicated and Erroneous | Intentionally (Earnestly, Sincerely) Communicated but Incorrect | Intentional: Exploitative, Deceptive, Malicious, Pecuniary, Identity, Status, Political, Revenge | Intentional: Humorous-Entertainment-Attention-seeking | |
| Misinformation | Misinformation | Disinformation | Disinformation | ||
| Content Form | Factoidal1 | Factual errors of AI, algorithms, recall, reporting, omission, commission, misinterpretation (e.g., a typo such as: “The incubation period for COVID-19 is 3 weeks” [vs. 2 weeks]) | Errors of fact, recall, reporting, omission, commission, misinterpretation (e.g., “The epidemic will disappear once summer comes”) (e.g., Orso et al., 2020) | Information designed to mislead in particular action-relevant context (e.g., activist group diffusing on social media that businesses are open by governmental decree on an earlier date than the actual date or deep fake incriminating or mis-contextualized photo) | Information to elicit distraction or entertainment (e.g., memes, puns, punchline jokes, catchphrases, satire, sarcasm, etc.) |
| Narrative/Attributional/Theoretical | Errors of narrative cohesion or attribution (e.g., “The Chinese expelled WHO representatives from their Wuhan lab once they knew they were at fault”; “they” is a misleading referent) | Conspiracy theories (e.g., “I think COVID was the brainstorm of Democrats who wanted to weaken Trump’s electoral prospects”) | Malign activist conspiracy theorizing or propaganda designed to mislead and establish belief systems contrary to best evidence (e.g., Russian bot farms amplifying misinformation and disinformation narratives to sow confusion and undermine trust in democratic institutions) | Narrative or coherent textual expositions to elicit distraction or entertainment (e.g., full essay parodies, humorous satire; e.g., The Onion, The Colbert Report) | |
| Note 1: Excusing the adjectival neologism, the intent is to suggest that many forms of misinformation arise as small bits, specific facts or statistics, or simple sentence assertions that often arise from faulty memory, sequential error accumulation (e.g., the Chinese whispers or telephone game), or even mechanical or software reproduction or distortion causes. | |||||
As with several of the other typologies, the key horizontal dimension concerns the motive underlying the dismisinformation, whether relatively innocent or intentionally deceptive and misleading. The vertical dimension, in contrast, refers to the extent to which the message unit under consideration is relatively isolated and discrete (i.e., factoidal), or more fully elaborated in enthymemes, narratives, and theoretical expositions (i.e., narrative/attributional/theoretical). Thus, for example, a simple mistake in a date or location becomes misinformative, but a deepfake meme intending to place a person in a false and incriminating context is more of a form of disinformation. In this typology, the category of fake news becomes distributed and is no longer a distinct category, due to its lack of coherent genetic discernable or codifiable characteristics or features. Instead, fake news becomes more of a rhetorical speech act, related to the tropes of nominal epithet, dysphemism, jeremiad, or diminutive. Nevertheless, as Avramov et al. (2020) argue, despite some key distinguishing features they posit, it is clear that there are “close relationships” (p. 515) and “cross-pollination” (p. 519) between the concepts of fake news and conspiracy theories.
Given this rather variegated landscape of dismisinformation in digital media, the question arises whether such modes of deception and disarray pose a problem for society. Understanding that there are always likely to be political disagreements over methodology and criteria for classifying dismisinformation, to date the research indicates that such viral forms have infected society in several domains particularly relevant to policy and to societal health and welfare.
Theorizing Conspiracy Theory, Fake News, and Dismisinformation
“Uncertainty is a central challenge for public communication on matters pandemic” (Davis, 2019, p. 30). Reducing our uncertainty about our environments is an evolved adaptive capacity (Flack & de Waal, 2007; Kobayashi & Hsu, 2017) for managing real and perceived threats (van Prooijen & Acker, 2015). Conspiracy beliefs provide people with a sense of control over their world (Imhoff & Lamberty, 2018; van Prooijen & Acker, 2015) as well as both a sense of uniqueness (Lantian et al., 2017) relative to the masses and as a sense of belonging with other like-minded persons (van Prooijen, 2016).
A variety of disciplinary (Butter & Knight, 2016; Lazer et al., 2018; van Prooijen & Douglas, 2018) and theoretical perspectives (e.g., affect-based: Zollo et al., 2015; agenda-setting: Limperos & Silberman, 2019; cognitive biases: Brotherton & French, 2015; Douglas et al., 2016; Lantian et al., 2017; frame theory: Franks et al., 2013; gist communication: Reyna, 2020; malign actors: Bradshaw & Howard, 2018; Pomerantsev & Weiss, 2014; Xia et al., 2019; semiotics: Leone et al., 2020; Madisson, 2014), and in particular attribution theory (Clarke, 2002; Spitzberg, 2001), provide a rationale for the role of lay theorizing as a way in which humans manage their uncertainty. Thus, a basic function of conspiracy theories and fake news is likely to be uncertainty reduction in the context of threatening or anxiety-provoking uncertainty. In serving such a function, it has been proposed that “conspiracy theories have deep psychological bases that are present in all human beings” (Andrade, 2020, p. 2). van Prooijen and Douglas (2018) expanded this assumption with four basic principles about conspiracy theories: Conspiracy beliefs are (i) consequential, (ii) universal, (iii) emotional, and (iv) social. To the extent these are taken as given, then an understanding of the varieties and vagaries of dismisinformation is well-warranted.
There are several perspectives toward dismisinformation and conspiratorial thinking (Douglas et al., 2019; Sunstein & Vermeule, 2009; Weiss et al., 2020). Broadly, theories regarding fake news, conspiracy theory, and dismisinformation can focus on any of multiple levels (Giglietto et al., 2019; Sharma et al., 2019), including individual factors such as personality dispositions that promote sharing or belief in such narratives (e.g., Brotherton & French, 2014; Brotherton et al., 2013; Bruder et al., 2013; Douglas & Sutton, 2011; Douglas et al., 2019; Drinkwater et al., 2020; Enders & Smallpage, 2019; Fasce & Picó, 2019a, 2019b; Goreis & Voracek, 2019; Hart & Graether, 2018; Mercier et al., 2018; Swami et al., 2017; Talwar et al., 2019; Wood, 2017; Zimmer et al., 2019); message factors that focus on affect and negativity (e.g., Porter et al., 2010; Zollo et al., 2015); linguistic, arousal factors or message features, multimodality, repetition, topoi, and tropes that predict virality (e.g., Guadagno et al., 2013; Hameleers et al., 2020; Klein et al., 2019; Pennycook et al., 2018); diffusion dynamics (e.g., Effron & Raj, 2020; Jang et al., 2018; Mahmoud, 2020; Shin et al., 2018; Törnberg, 2018; Vosoughi et al., 2018; Xian et al., 2019; Zannettou et al., 2018); group and social norms influences (Edy & Risley-Baird, 2016a, 2016b; Quinn et al., 2017; Seymour et al., 2015); or more macro societal and cultural factors (e.g., Rampersad & Althiyabi, 2020) or events (Douglas et al., 2019). Some models attempt to integrate factors across these levels (Geschke et al., 2019; Karlova & Fisher, 2013; Leal, 2020; Spitzberg, 2019).
The Evolution of Conspiratorial Thinking
Conspiratorial thinking is a worldview (Brotherton & French, 2015; Uscinski, 2018) found in individuals who are highly suspicious of (epistemic) authority and who believe that “things are not what they seem” (Keeley, 1999). Compared to ordinary narratives, conspiracy theories appear appealing to people who need epistemic (understanding, accuracy, and certainty), existential (control, safety, and security), or social (sense of belonging and social status) comfort and control (Swami et al., 2017). Conspiracy theories typically pose “an allegation regarding the existence of a secret plot between powerful people or organizations to achieve some goal (usually sinister) through systematic deception of the public” (Wood & Douglas, 2015, p. 2). Such narratives provide flexible interpretive frames capable of ongoing evolution and elaboration (Introne et al., 2018).
Conspiracy