Disinformation - Information Matters

February 3, 2026 Elisa Tattersall Wallin

How Will You Respond to the Unacceptable Costs of GenAI?

We must remember that those who profit the most from our growing reliance of GenAI are the tech companies themselves. Meanwhile, the people who are the most excited about AI are the ones who understand it the least. While machine learning can be useful, I argue that GenAI comes at an unacceptable cost. Taking in to consideration GenAI’s role in the spread of disinformation, the complex damages caused to people and the planet along with the proven negative effect to cognitive skills among users, this text advocates for critical perspectives, and ideally, critical refusal of GenAI.

Original

April 18, 2025 Elisa Tattersall Wallin

All Talk and Few Facts: Reflecting on the Role of Podcasts in Climate Obstruction

What role do podcasts play in spreading information about climate change? For a research project on environmental communication, I explored how these issues are discussed in podcasts. I found that serious channels with the ambition to inform about climate change issues share the space with channels with a dubious agenda and a loose relationship to facts.

Featured Translation

November 14, 2024 Madelyn Sanfilippo

Governing Misinformation

This translation of the authors’ recent ARIST review, “Sociotechnical Governance of Misinformation,” highlights the urgency and importance of empirical research on misinformation governance to inform decision-making and policy-making in support of a healthier information environment.

Featured Translation

May 21, 2024 Lubna Daraz

Deadly Fiction versus Living Facts: Tackling the Covid-19 Information Virus

The COVID-19 pandemic has tragically claimed the lives of over 7 million people globally. This toll has been exacerbated by widespread suspicions information regarding the origins and transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, leading to the proliferation of false beliefs and conspiracy theories. The dissemination of misinformation and disinformation (MIDI) has further fueled this phenomenon throughout the pandemic.

Featured Frontiers

March 29, 2024 Lubna Daraz

Unmasking Health Myths: Crafting Quality Standards Against Online Misinformation and Disinformation.

COVID-19 has become the catalyst of health MIDI (misinformation and disinformation) on the World Wide Web. It is difficult for people to know what to believe. If people act on wrong information, their health may get worse. We need to be ready when the next health emergency comes. We need to know how to find good health information.

Featured Translation

September 12, 2023 Nicole A. Cooke

The Colors of Disinformation

If we think about phrases, cliches, or old adages in the English language, many of them are rooted in a color, or the lack thereof. Many of these phrases also speak to the phenomenon of disinformation, its spread, and its entrenchment in our daily lives. This short essay will introduce several such colorful phrases.

Translation

January 6, 2023 Benjamin D. Horne

Is Automated Content Moderation Going to Solve Our Misinformation Problems?

Will automated content moderation work? Researchers and software engineers have made great strides in building automated content moderation tools, but these tools are not good enough yet, and are prone to making mistakes.

Education Opinion

January 25, 2022 Jeff Allen

Arbiters of Truth

Within the last five years, disinformation and misinformation have become part of our common vernacular. These terms are often misunderstood, misused, or even used interchangeably. Clarifying definitions are critical in a world of increasingly high-stakes information sharing, and this is of particular importance for information professionals.

Editorial

September 16, 2021 Chirag Shah

Misinformation—A Choice for the Rest of Us

If you have kept even one eye (or ear) on the news coming out in the last couple of years, chances are you have heard about “misinformation” and “disinformation.”