Beyond Verification| Affect, Certainty, and Mis/Disinformation—Afterword

Abstract

This afterword examines the centrality of affect as a key lever and critical site of intervention in mediated misinformation and disinformation. It starts by centering affect as a preconscious guide for navigating the world, explaining how consciousness-level interventions, such as fact-checking, ignore key psycho-physical-social dynamics through which affective reactions lead to personal and collective certainties. It then explores how mediation enables specific experiences of affect that serve political means and shows how this very question of affective experiences has to become central to countering misinformation and disinformation.