Disinformation, misinformation, infotainment, algowars — if the debates over the future of media the past few decades have meant anything, they’ve at least left a pungent imprint on the English language. There’s been a lot of invective and fear over what social media is doing to us, from our individual psychologies and neurologies to wider concerns about the strength of democratic societies. As Joseph Bernstein put it recently, the shift from “wisdom of the crowds” to “disinformation” has indeed been an abrupt one.
What is disinformation? Does it exist, and if so, where is it and how do we know we are looking at it? Should we care about