Misinformation and Political Communication

by

Zelly Martin, Samuel Woolley

• LAST MODIFIED: 20 March 2025
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0314

Introduction

The recent explosion of political misinformation around the globe has been tied to on-the-ground crises, from the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol to the 8 January 2023 attempt to overthrow President Lula da Silva in Brazil. Broadly, it is associated with seemingly continuous global instances of election interference and a worrying trend in democratic backsliding. Authoritarian leaders across the world are consolidating power by manipulating information ecosystems through censorship, surveillance, and the spread of false narratives. Although misinformation is by no means a new phenomenon, broad adoption of the Internet and social media have increased its reach and, potentially, its impact. While misinformation has a decades-old scholarly history, scholars have devoted ample attention to disinformation only since 2017. Indeed, it was only in 2016 that the contentious term “fake news” was introduced. Yet disinformation, or false information with the intent to deceive and harm, is often imbricated with misinformation, or false information spread without intent to deceive, in that they can morph into one another depending upon the goals of the spreader. Continued study of political communication and mis/disinformation is crucial to the health and safety of global democracy and access to information. With this in mind, what follows is a comprehensive overview of literature for scholars interested in examining political misinformation and disinformation within the field of communication, with a particular focus on social media and technology. The incorporated research includes both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and draws on an array of theoretical frameworks. Many of the scholars employ political communication theories, and thus sections are organized around various subfields of misinformation research with political communication theory interspersed throughout.

Conceptual and Definitional Work

Definitions of the various types of problematic information were scant prior to the 2016 US presidential election, an event that brought concerns surrounding “fake news” and misinformation to the fore for the general public and researchers alike. Since then, conceptual work surrounding the concepts of misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and fake news has proliferated in political communication scholarship. Yet as Wasserman and Madrid-Morales 2022 elucidates, many countries in the Global South experienced coordinated disinformation campaigns long before the 2016 US case study and resulting explosion in media and scholarly attention. Studies express varying opinions on terminology, with Lazer, et al. 2018 advocating for “fake news” and Bradshaw, et al. 2020 proposing the term “junk news,” which other scholars have since adopted. Jack 2017 and Wardle and Derakhshan 2017 define and demarcate the related terms of misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, propaganda, etc. Other studies have focused upon drawing the boundaries of the networks in which misinformation is produced, as in Marwick and Lewis 2017, which reports on the far-right and Howard 2020 conceptualizing lie machines. For reviews of various approaches to conceptualizing mis/disinformation, researchers should turn to Tucker, et al. 2018 and Freelon and Wells 2020.

• Bradshaw, S., P. Howard, B. Kollanyi, and L.-M. Neudert. 2020. Sourcing and automation of political news and information over social media in the United States, 2016–2018. Political Communication 37.2: 173–193.

  DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2019.1663322

  Introduces the concept of “junk news” to describe “sources that deliberately publish or aggregate misleading, deceptive, or incorrect information packaged as real news,” (p. 188) as well as a typology to identify it. Finds that during the United States 2016 presidential campaign, Twitter users shared junk news as often as they shared professional news, but this improved during the 2018 State of the Union address.

• Freelon, D., and C. Wells. 2020. Disinformation as political communication. In Special issue: Beyond Fake News: The Politics of Disinformation. Edited by Deen Freelon and Chris Wells. Political Communication 37.2: 145–156.

  DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2020.1723755

  This introduction to a foundational special issue on disinformation and political communication presents relevant work in the related areas of disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda studies. In 2020, disinformation work was nascent compared to work on misinformation and propaganda. The study thus covers seminal disinformation work and calls for additional research on disinformation effects, differences in impact of disinformation on disparate communities, and conceptualizing mis/disinformation.

• Howard, P. 2020. Lie machines: How to save democracy from troll armies, deceitful robots, junk news operations, and political operatives. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.

  DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv10sm8wg

  Introduces the “lie machine,” a global network in which political propaganda is produced by politicians, lobbyists, governments, and bots, distributed by social media firms, and marketed by paid consultants. This data-driven book not only demonstrates the ways in which the lie machine has been instrumental in attacks on democracy, but also poses solutions toward redesigning data flows and social media to foster a healthy democracy.

• Jack, C. 2017. Lexicon of lies: Terms for problematic information. Data & Society Research Institute.

  This foundational work defines and demarcates—where possible—the many categories under the umbrella term of problematic information, including misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda, among others.

• Lazer, D. M., M. A. Baum, Y. Benkler, et al. 2018. The science of fake news. Science 359.6380: 1094–1096.

  DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2998

  Defines fake news as “fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent” (p. 1094). Contributes brief historical background for the concept and evidence surrounding the spread of fake news on social media, including by bots. Then proposes both individual and platform interventions to mitigate the spread of fake news. For further literature on fake news, see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Communications article “Fake News.”

• Marwick, A., and R. Lewis. 2017. Media manipulation and disinformation online. Data & Society.

  Crafts a typology of far-right Internet actors who manipulate mainstream media using various online strategies, with differing motivations for doing so. Identifies the reasons that mainstream news is vulnerable to these attacks, especially contemporary news media’s reliance on social media. Finally, puts forth potential implications, including misinformation, radicalization, and decreased trust in the news.

• Tucker, J. A., A. Guess, P. Barberá, et al. 2018. Social media, political polarization, and political disinformation: A review of the scientific literature. SSRN Scholarly Paper 3144139. Social Science Research Network.

  Examines the literature up to 2018 on social media and political misinformation, disinformation, and polarization, as well as their impacts upon democracy and one another. Identifies future areas of research, including disinformation effects, various modalities of disinformation, cross-platform disinformation, disinformation variances across the globe, and disinformation policy, among others. This report thus serves as a valuable resource for those interested in political communication and misinformation.

• Wardle, C., and H. Derakhshan. 2017. Information disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making. Council of Europe.

  This seminal report was, in 2017, the most comprehensive account of the state of mis-, dis-, and malinformation, or what Wardle and Derakhshan call “information disorder.” Proposes a new conceptual framework for studying information disorder, which includes definitions of the respective types, phases, and elements. Examines the production, content, and reception of information disorder, reviews relevant literature, and ultimately recommends strategies to mitigate information disorder.

• Wasserman, H., and D. Madrid-Morales, eds. 2022. Disinformation in the Global South. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

  This edited collection highlights disinformation case studies outside of dominant Western contexts; social media platforms Facebook and Twitter; and the English language. Demonstrates that online disinformation campaigns in Myanmar, the Philippines, and Ukraine predated the US 2016 case study. Moves beyond social media disinformation campaigns, for instance exploring disinformation in Arab journalism and disinformation produced by politicians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Complicates the misinformation/disinformation binary.