The Information Age was touted as a leap forward in modernity from the Industrial Age. It was a massive development from when factory workers served as the lifeblood of Western economies, on the backs of whom capitalists made their fortunes. The digital revolution wrestled some of the power away from the owners of the means of production, democratizing access to information. More than mere advancements in how we lived and worked, it promised equality.

Yet we now live in a world where inequality is at its greatest, because we have only transferred power from titans of industry to Big Tech. More importantly, beyond capital, tech leaders increasingly hold the keys to democracy itself with their power over the information ecosystem. Society enjoys greater than ever access to information thanks to ICT, but the integrity of said information has been under attack for some time. The age of information, imagined to be the next chapter of the Enlightenment, has brought about information disorder – information pollution at a global scale (Council of Europe, n.d.). Information disorder syndrome (IDS) has become so pervasive in our time that scholars have categorized it as either misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (Kandel, 2020).

What is the pathology of disinformation?

Disinformation pathology identifies three components: bad actors, platforms, and audience. Our information ecosystem has primed us to consume and engage with information, regardless of veracity, courtesy of the ubiquity of communication platforms in everyday life (Abdul Rahoof, 2022). This has given bad actors a clear path to infecting public discourse with their own political and economic interests. In the West, the likes of Cambridge Analytica and the Russian and Chinese governments are viewed as bad actors as they seek to sow civil discord through social media-based psychological warfare. Instead of healing society through knowledge, information has been weaponized to topple regimes, sway elections, and fracture nations. If the role of information is to determine our reality, disinformation distorts it.

Abdul Rahoof considers our society’s vulnerability to disinformation as a consequence of Facebook et al.’s business model. For Marshall (2017), however, IDS is endemic to the concept of an information society and cannot be attributed solely to the Internet, news media, or even nefarious Big Tech. Even before the rise of ICT, we have been dealing with false information all the time. But today, the effects are far more pronounced, and we are far less equipped to distinguish good information from bad.

References

Information disorder. Council of Europe. (n.d.). https://www.coe.int/en/web/freedom-expression/information-disorder#{%2235128725%22:[0]} 

Kandel N. Information Disorder Syndrome and Its Management. JNMA J Nepal Med Assoc. 2020 Apr 30;58(224):280-285. doi: 10.31729/jnma.4968. PMID: 32417871; PMCID: PMC7580464.

Abdul Rahoof, K.K. 2022. Disinformation and Manipulation in Digital Media: Information Pathologies, Information, Communication & Society, 25:11, 1676-1678, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2021.1986562