Misinformation—false or misleading information shared without necessarily malicious intent—and disinformation—deliberately deceptive content—are now embedded within these same infrastructures. Wardle and Derakhshan describe this as “information disorder,” emphasising how content, actors and digital amplification interact to destabilise information environments. In networked societies, academic libraries, scholarly databases, search engines and social media platforms collectively form the “information ecosystems” on which the knowledge economy depends. Misinformation is not simply noise around a stable signal. Empirical work in cognitive and social psychology shows that false claims influence individual judgments, decision-making and behaviour even after correction, through the continued influence and “illusory truth” effects (Ecker and colleagues; Pennycook & Rand). In a knowledge economy where decisions about investment, innovation and policy are data-driven, such systematic distortions generate measurable welfare losses. How?

1. Erosion of epistemic trust and institutional legitimacy: A first and foundational impact concerns the erosion of epistemic trust—confidence in the reliability of information sources and institutions. Lazer and colleagues’ landmark review in Science argues that “fake news” threatens democratic institutions by exploiting vulnerabilities in both human cognition and digital media systems. Bennett and Livingston similarly describe a “disinformation order” in which strategic falsehoods become routine tools of political and economic competition. From a knowledge-economy perspective, trust is not a soft variable but a form of social and institutional capital. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD report Facts Not Fakes, documents how persistent disinformation reduces trust in public institutions, regulators and media, complicating policy implementation and weakening confidence in expert communities. For markets that rely on expert certification—such as pharmaceuticals, higher education, and research-intensive industries—declining trust in expertise directly raises transaction costs, as actors must invest more resources in verification, legal safeguards and redundancy.

Psychological research illuminates why this erosion is difficult to reverse. Ecker and colleagues  show that belief in misinformation is driven by cognitive fluency, repetition, motivated reasoning and social identity processes; corrections often leave a “residue” of influence. When actors perceive all information as equally contested, they may adopt a generalised skepticism that undermines legitimate scientific and policy communication. In the context of academic libraries, this manifests as students and researchers distrusting carefully curated databases, while giving comparable weight to unvetted online content, weakening the institutional role of libraries as trusted knowledge brokers.

2. Distortions of markets, productivity and financial value: Misinformation has quantifiable economic costs in markets central to the knowledge economy. At macro level, the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranks disinformation among the top global risks for 2025, highlighting its capacity to trigger stock-market volatility, reputational crises and misallocation of capital (Serrano). A study by Roberto Cavazos for the University of Baltimore and cybersecurity firm CHEQ estimated the annual global cost of fake news at roughly USD 78 billion, combining stock-market losses and poor financial decisions.

Sector-specific analyses show similar patterns. London Economics’ modeling of COVID-19 mask-related misinformation in the UK attributes over 21,000 additional cases, hundreds of deaths and GBP 3.6 billion in GDP losses in 2020 to online falsehoods about face masks, through their effects on behaviour and the resulting need for stricter restrictions. These indirect costs arise because misinformation reduces the effectiveness of evidence-based interventions, forcing governments to adopt more economically disruptive measures.

At the firm level, disinformation campaigns and fake reviews can destroy intangible assets such as brand reputation and consumer trust. The WEF review cited empirical cases in which a single false tweet briefly erased USD 136 billion from the S&P 500, and court cases where fake online reviews caused revenue declines of 20–25% for individual businesses. In an economy where corporate value is increasingly tied to reputation, data and intellectual property, such attacks represent direct damage to the knowledge capital embedded in organisations. Digital platform markets are particularly vulnerable. False product reviews and fabricated “expert” endorsements manipulate information asymmetries on which e-commerce and platform economies rely. Studies of fake reviews suggest global losses exceeding USD 150 billion annually through distorted consumer choice and unfair competition (Cavazos, cited in Serrano). These distortions reduce the efficiency gains typically associated with digital markets and undermine the promise of data-driven consumer welfare.

3. Impacts on innovation systems, science and higher education: The knowledge economy depends on scientific integrity and on the timely uptake of reliable research in policy and industry. Misinformation disrupts these pathways in multiple ways.

First, it undermines the social legitimacy of science. Lewandowsky and colleagues argue that the “post-truth” environment enables organised campaigns to delegitimise climate science, vaccination research and other politically salient domains, slowing evidence-based policy and technological adoption. Public health scholars have described the COVID-19 “infodemic” as a parallel crisis, in which mis- and disinformation about treatments, vaccines and the severity of the virus complicate epidemiological control and reduce compliance with scientific guidance (Roozenbeek and colleagues).

Second, misinformation interacts with the political economy of scholarly communication. Predatory journals, pseudo-expertise and fabricated data undermine the credibility of the scientific record. While these phenomena are distinct from social media misinformation, they are amplified by the same digital infrastructures and can be weaponised by disinformation campaigns to discredit entire fields (“if some studies are fake, none can be trusted”). For academic libraries—which negotiate access to journals, curate institutional repositories and teach research skills—this creates an expanded burden of quality control and user education.

Third, is the psychological mechanisms documented by Ecker and colleagues, Pennycook and Rand operate within scholarly communities as well as among the general public. Confirmation bias, motivated reasoning and the illusory truth effect can shape how researchers and policymakers interpret contested evidence, in turn influencing funding priorities and regulatory decisions. In emerging knowledge economies where institutional checks may be weaker, the risk that politicised misinformation distorts national research agendas is particularly significant.

For universities and academic libraries, this manifests as a widening gap between the skills assumed by curricula and the actual information practices of students. Cooke, in her monograph Fake News and Alternative Facts, shows that traditional information literacy models—focused on bibliographic skills and source evaluation—are insufficient in a post-truth era that requires critical consumption of emotionally charged, multimodal and algorithmically curated content. If graduates lack robust epistemic competencies, employers in knowledge-intensive sectors must invest more heavily in remedial training, and the overall productivity gains expected from tertiary education are diminished.

Moreover, misinformation can exacerbate educational inequalities. Access to high-quality information and to guidance from librarians and educators is uneven across regions, institutions and social groups. OECD case studies on media literacy initiatives (e.g., in Finland, Estonia and Ireland) suggest that targeted programmes can build societal resilience to disinformation, but they also highlight capacity gaps in many countries. For emerging economies seeking to leverage universities and research libraries as drivers of development, the absence of systematic media and information literacy policies risks entrenching a “two-speed” knowledge economy: one segment anchored in credible institutions, another governed by rumours, conspiracies and unverified online content. So, what are the implications for academic libraries and knowledge infrastructures?

Here are some of the implications for academic libraries and knowledge infrastructures: within this landscape, academic libraries occupy a fundamental stand if often under-recognised—position. They are simultaneously custodians of trusted scholarly records, educators in information literacy, and participants in global digital infrastructures (through consortia, repositories and data services). The negative impacts of misinformation on the knowledge economy therefore translate into strategic challenges for library systems.

First, libraries must defend and communicate their role as trustworthy intermediaries. Cooke’s analysis of “post-truth” information behaviour underscores the need for libraries to explicitly address affect, identity and social context in their instruction, rather than assuming that users will naturally privilege peer-reviewed sources. This implies integrating critical media literacy, algorithmic awareness and prebunking strategies (Roozenbeek and colleagues) into library teaching, not as optional workshops but as core components of curricula.

Second, academic libraries need to strengthen collaborations with other knowledge-producing institutions. OECD’s work on behavioural and media-literacy interventions shows that user-level tools (e.g., prompts to consider accuracy, games like “GoViral!”) can significantly reduce intentions to share false news. Academic libraries can contextualise such interventions within disciplinary research practices, helping students and staff internalise epistemic norms that resist misinformation.

Third, in countries of the Global South, including African states seeking to build knowledge economies, academic libraries are often among the few institutions with both technical infrastructure and professional expertise in information organisation. Their potential role in national strategies against misinformation—through community engagement, open-access repositories of locally relevant research, and partnerships with public libraries and schools—is therefore significant. Yet they also face resource constraints, uneven connectivity and limited staff capacity. If these structural limitations are not addressed, misinformation may widen existing knowledge divides between well-resourced and under-resourced institutions. Hence, what is the closing reflection?

Conclusively, misinformation is not an external disturbance that can be managed at the margins of the knowledge economy. It is deeply entangled with the digital platforms, behavioural dynamics and institutional arrangements that underpin contemporary production and use of knowledge. By eroding epistemic trust, distorting markets, undermining science, degrading human capital and weakening democratic governance, misinformation imposes substantial and measurable welfare costs. For academic libraries and their host universities, this poses both risks and responsibilities.

The risks include declining trust in expert-curated resources, increasing difficulty in maintaining research integrity, and growing demands for user support in ever more complex information environments. The responsibilities include re-imagining information literacy as critical, socio-technical and lifelong; investing in partnerships that link libraries to national and international initiatives on information integrity; and advocating for policies that recognise libraries as core infrastructures of the knowledge economy, not ancillary services.

For researchers in academic librarianship, future work should deepen empirical understanding of how library interventions—whether through pedagogy, discovery systems or institutional policies—can mitigate the economic and social harms of misinformation, particularly in emerging knowledge economies. Such research will be crucial for ensuring that libraries remain not only guardians of the scholarly record but active agents in sustaining the integrity and productivity of the global knowledge economy.