The misinformation wars - a reading list

Important readings that challenge conventional wisdom about the nature, novelty, prevalence, and impact of misinformation.

Since 2016, Western societies have been gripped by widespread panic about misinformation and related phenomena such as fake news, post-truth, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and so on. This panic is driven by the narrative that many problematic trends across Western societies are rooted in an unprecedented explosion of false and misleading content spread or amplified by right-wing populists, social media algorithms, foreign disinformation campaigns, and more.

Relative to conventional wisdom among members of the laptop class, I am very critical of this narrative (see here, here, here, here, and here). In next week’s essay, I will continue developing this scepticism with the second part of my five-part “Debunking Disinformation Myths” series (see the first part here). However, because several people have asked me for reading recommendations on this topic, here is a list of articles and books that have influenced how I think about misinformation and the “misinformation wars”.