True Costs of Misinformation| Political Finance and Patronage Behind Disinformation: Evidence From India’s Election Campaigns

Abstract

Over the last decade, India has become a quintessential example of the scourge of misinformation. A particular manifestation of this problem has been seen in the sphere of competitive electoral politics where leading political parties have invested heavily in creating an elaborate “disinformation machinery” that consists of social media cells, troll armies, and professional political consultants to disseminate their partisan propaganda and half-truths. This article uses the lens of political finance to explore the aggregate and distributional costs associated with the circulation of political disinformation in India. By drawing on long-term fieldwork conducted in India, I outline three important dimensions along which the “costs” associated with misinformation should be accounted: (i) regulatory loopholes in political finance regulation and campaign expenditure; (ii) imbrication of misinformation with state patronage networks; and (iii) the (re-)distributional costs associated with the finance model that sustains disinformation.