Guarding information’s Other: Theorising beyond information and communications technologies for disinformation

Abstract

If Plato’s allegory of information trouble occurred within a torchlit cave, the scale and scope of technical developments in information and communication technologies have not superseded his perennial concerns. Drawing from the sociology of knowledge and objectivity in news, in this article, I examine a set of cases of contested information within American communication. Beyond reductionist approaches to objectivity and falsehood in information, these cases bring to light political and cultural contestation over the presentation, omission, and selection of information, as well as value in speculative information. Taken together, these highlight the need for a framework to cover a range of informational issues. The proposed meta-classification of information’s Other opens an analytical space not only to account for today’s alleged information disorder, but also to address long-standing concerns with information order.