True Costs of Misinformation| True Costs of Misinformation—Editorial Introduction

Abstract

Under what circumstances do policymakers and civil society define misinformation as a social problem, and how are harms redressed, if at all? Misinformation is a sociotechnical phenomenon with multiple, sometimes contradictory, aims that evolve in situ, where media manipulators leverage the social web for play, panic, and/or politics. Beginning in 2016, the field of disinformation studies sought to address the emergent capacities of social media products that advantage media manipulation campaigns, where technology companies provided low- to no-cost broadcast tools for increasing engagement without much concern for the quality of information. Rather than view misinformation as an anomaly or bug, we see misinformation as a feature of sociotechnical systems, particularly social media, that seek to increase the overall speed and scale of audience engagement. In this Special Section, we ask: Who pays for the harms and damage wrought by misinformation? What are their financial, social, and human costs to society? Whose definitions, measures, and experiences of digital harms matter when coordinating a global response?