Misinformation and disinformation are not the top global threats over the next two years

The World Economic Forum's ranking of top global threats is either wrong or not even wrong.

Last Wednesday, I published an essay about the alarmism surrounding misinformation that has gripped experts, social scientists, and policymakers since 2016. As with much of my work on this topic, the essay is critical of modern misinformation research. It argues that this research confronts a dilemma:

• On the one hand, if researchers focus on clear-cut cases of misinformation, misinformation is rare and largely symptomatic of other problems, at least in Western democracies.

• On the other hand, if researchers focus on subtler ways in which communication can be misleading even when it is not demonstrably false, the concept of misinformation becomes so broad, amorphous, and value-laden that we should not delegate the task of identifying misinformation to a class of experts.

On the same day I published that essay, the World Economic Forum - the organisation that hosts the annual Davos meeting - published its Global Risk Report for 2024. Reporting on the views of “1,500 global experts from academia, business, government, the international community and civil society”, the report identified the top global threats over the next two years. In a perfect encapsulation of the panic surrounding this topic since 2016, it placed misinformation and disinformation at the very top of the list:

Responses to the ranking were polarised. The influential American writer and pundit Nate Silver, who linked my article in support of his views, responded as follows:

Unsurprisingly, many leading misinformation researchers disagreed with this assessment. They argued (e.g., here, here, here, and here) that the ranking is appropriate because misinformation and disinformation cause or exacerbate all other theats, including war.

Although I don’t think experts are idiots, my own view is closer to Silver’s. Specifically, I think that the ranking is either wrong or so confused and ill-defined that it is not even wrong.

On technical, narrow definitions of dis/misinformation, the ranking is wrong

The most obvious problem with the ranking is this: On most widely-accepted technical definitions of these terms, misinformation and disinformation are not very prevalent, at least in Western democracies. Among those who pay attention to politics at all - many citizens don’t - the overwhelming majority get their information from mainstream, broadly reliable sources.