Disinformation as a Threat to Deliberative Democracy

Abstract

<jats:p> It is frequently claimed that online disinformation threatens democracy, and that disinformation is more prevalent or harmful because social media platforms have disrupted our communication systems. These intuitions have not been fully developed in democratic theory. This article builds on systemic approaches to deliberative democracy to characterize key vulnerabilities of social media platforms that disinformation actors exploit, and to clarify potential anti-deliberative effects of disinformation. The disinformation campaigns mounted by Russian agents around the United States’ 2016 election illustrate the use of anti-deliberative tactics, including corrosive falsehoods, moral denigration, and unjustified inclusion. We further propose that these tactics might contribute to the system-level anti-deliberative properties of epistemic cynicism, techno-affective polarization, and pervasive inauthenticity. These harms undermine a polity’s capacity to engage in communication characterized by the use of facts and logic, moral respect, and democratic inclusion. Clarifying which democratic goods are at risk from disinformation, and how they are put at risk, can help identify policies that go beyond targeting the architects of disinformation campaigns to address structural vulnerabilities in deliberative systems. </jats:p>

Digital Disinformation and Preventive Actions: Perceptions of Users from Argentina, Chile, and Spain

“…Regarding ideological self-positioning, some studies agreed that the American right-wing is substantially more vulnerable to disinformation attacks, and more likely to accept them, than the left-wing. It is an 'ideological asymmetry' , showed in two different dimensions: First, the content dimension, wherein disinformation providers produce vastly more conservative-oriented messages than liberal ones (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017;Howard, Ganesh, Liotsiou, Kelly, & Francois, 2018;Mckay & Tenove, 2020); second, the reception dimension, showing that conservatives are also more likely to engage with the disinformation messages that target them than liberals (Grinberg, Joseph, Friedland, Swire-Thompson, & Lazer, 2019;Hjorth & Adler-Nissen, 2019).…”

“…In recent years, academics and the media have been paying attention to the phenomenon of disinformation McKay & Tenove, 2020). The fact that disinformation poses a threat to democratic institutions has contributed to mounting concern regarding this problem (Miller & Vaccari, 2020).…”

Philosophy and Alternative Realities

“…Classroom discussions about the social aspects of the fact‐value distinction can contribute to a better understanding of its practical importance. In political philosophy, do we explain the importance for democracy of a common ground of facts, based on science, public statistics, freedom of information, and free speech? Currently, this common ground is threatened by systematic and deliberate disinformation, which is often disseminated with the purpose to destabilize democracy (McKay & Tenove, 2020). Do we invite students to reflect on the threats to this common ground, the difficulties involved in maintaining it, and what can be done to protect and strengthen it? Do we discuss the importance of impartiality, in particular in roles such as those of a judge, election official, or civil servant?…”

Russian Internet Research Agency Disinformation Activities on Tumblr: Identity, Privacy, and Ambivalence

“…Prior to 2017, disinformation rarely appears in academic literature, though now there is a marked increase in research across multiple disciplines (Freelon & Wells, 2020). Rather than necessarily drive a population toward a particular action, disinformation campaigns can create a confused, polarized, hostile information landscape (Pomerantsev & Weiss, 2014) that undermines deliberative democracy (McKay & Tenove, 2020). Linvill and Warren (2020), drawing from the partial IRA tweets dataset released by Twitter, identify five different account types being utilized by the agency between 2009 and 2018.…”