Issue #82
by Gary Marchionini (UNC School of Information & Library Science)
A July 11, 2024 article in the New York Times provides a short briefing on the somewhat frustrating efforts to fight disinformation. The article by Tiffany Tsu and Stuart Thompson is enticingly titled “Even Disinformation Experts Don’t Know How to Stop It.”¹ It uses the case of a dedicated and savvy civic group volunteer who tries to help voters make informed decisions, and focuses on her frustration with not knowing if her efforts make a difference and feeling overwhelmed by the scope and volume of disinformation campaigns. The article cites one large and important (although not yet peer reviewed, posted to PsyArXiv) study that demonstrates that the usual strategies that information professionals and others use to detect, deflect, and correct disinformation are not having much impact, and quotes a few prominent disinformation scholars in the US and Europe on the growing challenges. From an information science perspective, the article raises awareness but is disheartening by lamenting the sheer magnitude and complexity of the problem. It is typical popular journalism — attention getting and compellingly written problem identification but giving little guidance about solutions.
Why should disinformation be any more complex and challenging than other grand challenges of our time such as climate change, inequality, or war? We expect thousands of people to be working on these problems — why not information generation use and abuse? Like other global and serious challenges, we should be celebrating the work that is being done and encourage and support continued study. Whether information professionals focus on interventions such as tools and filters or on training and public service campaigns, or work locally like the woman profiled in the article to address the problem, ultimately we all have personal responsibilities to help ourselves and our communities to understand how information is generated in practice (both by humans and increasingly by algorithms), the many economic or political motivations that drive generation and propagation, and systemic strategies and tools that are used to influence or control information exposure and consumption. It is likely that librarians, archivists, journalists, and other information specialists will become heroes of the future — helping us all navigate, find, and evaluate our information diets. However, becoming more active gatekeepers seems like a mistake in the long term. Rather, helping people understand the changing information ecology, taking personal responsibility to evaluate and reflect, and especially helping people not give in to overload and frustration by adopting ignorance as an information strategy.
It is an exciting and important time to be an information scholar and practitioner.
1: Thompson, Stuart A., and Tiffany Tsu. “Even the Best Tools to Fight Disinformation Are Not Enough.” The New York Times, 11 July 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/technology/disinformation-tools.html?searchResultPosition=1.
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