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In principle, liberal democracy is about an equal right to decision-making and presumes a public sphere, equally open to all. However, in practice, this normative ideal, articulated, among others, by Jürgen Habermas and John Dewey, is farther away today than ever since WWII. The "real" public sphere, distinguished from its ideal, is harmed by conflicting and divisive interests, often presenting themselves in the form of information campaigns targeting the most vulnerable groups of society. The information offered is often labelled as disinformation, i.e. information that is misleading or purposefully false. However, this article claims that we must distinguish between different uses of the concept of disinformation. Although disinformation campaigns are increasingly harmful for democracy, the label of disinformation can be used to silence necessary critical voices and movements in society, thus promoting a public sphere based on a forced consensus. This article focuses on current European developments, although there are references to the developments in other continents as well. It is based on a review of recent research publications and public policy documents about different aspects of disinformation and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media platforms are fertile ground for spreading problematic information. This paper explored Library and Information Science (LIS) students' understanding of problematic information, i.e. misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, fake news, rumor, etc. associated with their ability to categorize these. This paper showed the relation between what students think they know and what they actually know in regard to recognizing mis-dis-mal-information. A survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire among LIS students of all public universities in Bangladesh, and 426 usable responses get backed. For analyzing the data, SPSS was used to carry out the descriptive analysis, Pearson Correlation, and Spearman's Correlation Coefficient. The result showed that students were connected with social media platforms on a daily basis, most preferably with Facebook and YouTube. In terms of sharing or commenting on a post that was not completely accurate, almost half of the respondents are habituated with the aim of doing so. Although the basic familiarity rated by students themselves with the problematic information is nearly satisfactory, the capacity to recognize this information whenever it occurred in hands-on tasks was very low. There is a positive correlation among gender, study level, and frequency of using Internet and social media with familiarity with misinformation, disinformation, fake news, rumor, and malinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can information literacy (IL) skills be improved during one semester? The proliferation of information disorders—fabricated stories, misleading content, clickbait—requires skills beyond using a fake-news checklist. Students in an introductory political science course were asked to analyze a news story every week as a course objective to increase IL. Thirty sections of American Government & Politics were given versions of an assignment eventually named "News Analysis." Class averages did not improve over time; instead, most semesters saw a negative correlation between the number of iterations of the assignment and the average class score. The instructor changed tactics multiple times to address these shortcomings, but deficiencies in IL reflected both instructor failure and systemic problems in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information disorder involves wide-ranging content that challenges democratic rules and social harmony. Pseudo-media that relies on conspiracy theories and misleading versions of the social reality contribute to feeding the disinformation ecosystem by reinforcing biased messages with expressive patterns and polarising practices. This article focuses on the content published (N = 1,396) by seven far-right wing Spanish pseudo-media. Based on qualitative and quantitative methods, it analyses headlines, types of text and sources, as well as the distortion strategies of journalistic conventions. Results show that the emotional component is expressed by means of polarised headlines that rely on clickbait to gain attention and build a particular jargon, exacerbated by disinformation and populist practices. The absolute dependence of conspicuous headlines is evidenced by the limited resources of pseudo-media, whose production lies in a mix of opinion text and the processing of online content. Plagiarism from mainstream—mainly conservative—media, social networks and website siblings fuel these outlets that play the role of the ambiguity, mimicking journalistic conventions and mocking them by means of disinformation practices, with a particular focus on reframing social issues, progressive policies and measures to manage the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As COVID-19 raged through the United States, Americans were inundated with messages from multiple and competing sources, some based on political ideologies, fueled by misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation via cable and social media. This study uses the IDEA model for effective instructional risk and crisis communication to examine the role of state governors in encouraging compliance with public health recommendations. It examines the relationships between messages sent in high- and low-compliance states, between state compliance levels and tendencies in public attitudes, and between messages sent and resident decisions about COVID-19 compliance. We analyzed press release messages from governors of five states with high immigrant populations and surveyed the public in these states to examine compliance rates regarding COVID-19 protective actions. Findings illustrate that perceived source credibility is critical to behavioral compliance regardless of message content adherence and that political ideology may become a competing narrative and may influence resident decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A surge in the spread of fake news after a terror attack such as the 2018 Surabaya bombings has been observed in recent times. It was clear that the spread of fake news (i.e., information disorder [ID]) can amplify the social impact and consequences of a terror attack on the local community. However, research on the prevalence of ID in connection to a terror incident is not well-studied in Southeast Asia (SEA). To address this gap systematically, this study describes an approach taken to study this nexus between the spread of ID in connection to a terror attack. By drawing on the Global Terrorism Database and manual searches, a case study bank of 39 terror incidents with instances of ID in SEA from 2015 to 2019 was created through the use of a mix of automated and human workflows. This exploratory study sought to document the kinds of ID that emerged in English language media after a terror incident in SEA and to identify implications for the field of ID as well as terrorism [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically analyses the effects of predatory publishing as a major contributor to misinformation and disinformation amongst academicians and learners in developing countries. The paper notes that predatory publishing poses a major hindrance in the struggles to enhance academic excellence. This paper established that predatory publishing has great consequences in the spread of misinformation and disinformation amongst academicians and Learners in Developing Countries. Some of the reasons that necessitate the increase in predatory publishing in developing countries are; the lack of proper policies or guidance on where research articles should or should not be published, the failure to embrace open access initiatives for visibility and dissemination of research outputs so as to discourage academic malpractice and unethical behaviors, lack of funds, poor or limited information literacy among other factors. The paper is unique in that it comprehensively analyses the concept of predatory journals with misinformation and disinformation in academic circles in the developing world, putting into consideration that most academic staff or researchers assume that whatever is on the web is genuine and absolute true information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]