Remedying disinformation and fake news? The cultural frameworks of fake news crisis responses and solution-seeking

Abstract

For the past half-decade, disinformation and misinformation have been discussed in the public sphere as the construct ‘fake news’, through a discourse of crisis and, increasingly, in terms of responses, remedies, solutions, interventions and preventative affordances. This article explores the emergence of the crisis–remedy discourse of disinformation, arguing that responsiveness is grounded in a solutionism that positions ‘fake news’ as crisis. Drawing on select examples, we use a cultural approach to analyse a range of remedies put forward in public sphere, policy and scholarly discourse. We identify three frameworks of the crisis–remedy discourse: alarmism, regulation/eradication, and adaptation. The article presents examples of five remedial approaches and theorises their alignment with different crisis frameworks. By thinking through the cultural formation of different remedies, we aim to draw out cultural studies’ utility in future efforts to determine the efficacy and ethics of current and future solutions to disinformation.

Information in Crisis Mode? A Conceptual Analysis of the Information Crisis Discourse

“…Greater work to understand the histories and contexts of crisis, including who is included and excluded from crisis modelling and which communities are overdetermined as vulnerable and at‐risk while having long‐standing practices of critical negotiation and mutual aid undermined, are ways that will help expand and extend ‘information crisis’ beyond normative assumptions. Care should also be taken to explore how crisis can be used as a lens to apprehend change rather than merely to portend threat and uncertainty; Stuart Hall (1979), for example, argued that crisis can be formative rather than being understood exclusively as a rupture that destroys the past (Cover et al, 2022). The emphasis on change further illustrates the need to shift the focus of ‘information crisis’ responses from merely bouncing back, which further references a reified status quo, to learning how we go on, an approach that acknowledges the need to reconcile the impact of disruption.…”

“…The emphasis on change further illustrates the need to shift the focus of ‘information crisis’ responses from merely bouncing back, which further references a reified status quo, to learning how we go on, an approach that acknowledges the need to reconcile the impact of disruption. We are also challenged to think beyond knee‐jerk fears about changing information practices to focus, instead, on how we work within information flows that open “liminal spaces of unknowability about contemporary cultural, social and political relationships” (Cover et al, 2022, p.219). An aspect of crisis that is not always represented within narratives, this uncertainty warrants a reflexive consideration of the role that information plays in these ruptures as well as the cultural formations within which these ideas are grounded.…”

“…Beyond drawing attention to threatened information ecosystems, we also note how the status quo is enforced or maintained through the presentation of solutions to the ‘information crisis’, including the use of technology. Within the ‘information crisis’ discourse, technology plays a dual role as both catalyst to crisis and the reason behind the crisis, including through the spread of fake news and misinformation or the loss of privacy (Cover et al, 2022; Kuo & Marwick, 2021). At the same time, technology is often also positioned as the means to fix the crisis, an approach that critical scholars see as a form of techno‐solutionism (Floegel & Costello, 2022; Milan, 2020; Benjamin, 2019).…”

“…achine learning to find and sort through online misinformation (Cover et al, 2022;Palomo & Sedano, 2021). Thinking alongside Cover et al (2022) and Ellcessor (2022), we posit that framing technology as solution presumes that crisis and its constitutive complexities can be easily remedied, thus enforcing a dialectical relationship between emergency and normalcy. In other words, technologies mediate a restoration of the prior state of affairs imagined to be Returning to the example of platform content moderation, the AI news but also the communicative, cultural and economic conditions that enable the speediness of the technological fix reflects the presumed immediacy of the crisis, these techno-solutions often operate through their own forms of bias and unfair labour practices (Roberts, 2019;Gillespie, 2018).…”

When fact-checking is not WEIRD: Negotiating consensus outside Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries

“…Non-WEIRD fact-checking organizations choose instead to strategically rely first and foremost on educational initiatives and social corrections devoted to community practices of fact-making. The impact of such strategies will ultimately depend on the resilience of these communities to distribute counter narratives to that which is popularly termed "fake news" (Cover et al 2022). These remain significant challenges, and further research should explore the competing frameworks that identify, correct, and remove falsehoods across different linguistic boundaries and that also legitimize fact-checking-including those funded by governments and corporate initiatives.…”