From a non-peer reviewed, unscientific study by Moms Across America, to the most listened to podcast, a specific piece of misinformation makes its way to millions of listeners and amplifies the deception, drawing the attention of media and impacting the nearly 2 million Girl Scouts in the US. But why was this piece of misinformation constructed? Why does it gain traction? And what can we do about it?

Along with Melissa Ocepek, a scholar of food and the everyday, we have recently edited a series of case studies published open access as Governing Misinformation in Everyday Knowledge Commons that offers several lessons to help us answer those questions.

First, as we found, knowledge commons as communities that are coproduced with knowledge resources, including ideas and narratives that are false, govern their membership and knowledge in ways that are consistent with their contextual values, norms, and objectives. Moms Across America, as a community, produces content and reports that support their aims and values around the purity of children and the need to protect that perceived purity in the food they’re fed. From narratives around sugar and food dye, to this specific assertion around metal and pesticides in cookies. These concerns are real and not new, but how we study them, think about them, and whether we attack the Girl Scouts or Monsanto demonstrate the difference between misinformation, disinformation, and sound reasoning supported by meaningful evidence. To be sure, the modern American food supply does include trace amounts of naturally occurring metals and artificial and harmful chemicals, but it is also true that the FDA regulates and tests the amount of these compounds in foods, especially mass-produced foods like Girl Scout Cookies. Decades ago, our country decided that benefits of pesticides outweighed the costs in part by creating a system to regularly test foods for safety.

Second, power and influence matter a lot to how misinformation is perceived, including whether communities consider false narratives to be problematic. It is easy for communities to paint with a broad brush and see more problems with groups and organizations that are perceived to have different political valances. In recent years, the Girl Scouts have been perceived by some to be a liberal or progressive organization and therefore a worthy target to use within politically conservative echo chambers. That there is a power imbalance between adult pundits or activists and children does not appear to weigh in their legitimacy calculus, echoing findings in multiple case studies around power wielded by influencers and politicians over false narratives. However, as a study of Instagram influencers show, when those false narratives jeopardize the safety or well-being of others or defraud impressionable minors, the pushback is often significant.

Third, top-down efforts to address misinformation via one-size-fits-all approaches are often ineffective and considerably less nuanced than grounded, community-driven approaches. While, true or false might seem like a clear binary, context matters to interpretation and the degree to which deception or falsehoods are perceived to be problematic differ widely. Official responses versus what we see in individual communities show that interventions like limiting forwarding or community moderation are viewed more favorably and more effective. At the end of the day, people don’t know Joe Rogan, but they do know their daughters, nieces, and neighbors.

Lessons and takeaways

The variety of case studies we brought together in our book highlight the ubiquity of misinformation in everyday life. Whether it is the complicated realities of small amounts of pesticides in our food system or, Melissa’s favorite example, the healthfulness of ice cream people struggle with making sense of our complicated food system. This is all real and normal and somewhat expected. Understanding the specific localized context of this example can help the parents and children fundraising through Girl Scout Cookie sales and these lessons, along with the varied group of case studies we present, offer a new way of approaching misinformation by focusing on everyday life.