Disinformation campaigns and Hate Speech, International Foundation for Electoral Systems, Lisa Reppell and Erica Shein
Disinformation is not a new phenomenon. The sharing of false and misleading content is an age-old political tactic. Advances in technology and changes to the media environment are what set the contemporary “disinformation problem” apart. Similar to hate speech, the “disinformation problem” has a multitude of conceptual frames. It has been characterized as information disorder, information manipulation, information war, computational propaganda and coordinated inauthentic behavior. What these frames share in common is an understanding that disinformation in today's new media environment is not only a problem of false information; it is a distortion of and an attack on our entire information ecosystem. It makes the free exchange of ideas much more difficult, if not impossible, in some contexts, undermining an essential element of any functioning democracy.