The Context of Fake News, Disinformation, and Manipulation

Abstract

AbstractThe purpose of this chapter is to discuss how, and the extent to which, we may consider fake news, disinformation, and manipulation as bellwethers for the health of democracy. The chapter argues that there are two quite different readings of the democratic implications of the fake news, disinformation, and manipulation challenge: on the one hand, as the rise of a certain type of political actor that claims that established politicians and their conduct of politics have lost touch with ordinary people and their concerns, and in addition, actively seeks to undermine confidence in science and scientists. Thus, the factual and evidence-based foundation of democratic politics is challenged by the rise of a particular species of populist politician and populist parties marked by a distinct style, and relatively unencumbered by conventional party politics. If these phenomena can be identified with and confined to a specific set of actors, parties, and their supporters, then the political challenge is how best to contain or isolate them. The other reading approaches the democratic challenge from a more structural angle and searches for the roots of anti-political sentiment and the trust gap in the circumstances surrounding policymaking and politics. The two readings suggest different causal dynamics in terms of how fake news, disinformation, and manipulation affect democracy. If structural changes are important sources of fake news, disinformation, and manipulation, then the rise of populism is hardly the only source of fake news and disinformation. If so, the irony in focusing on the most blatant manifestations of fake news as espoused by populist politicians is that it may detract attention from those factors that helped create such traits in the first place.