A Dependency Model of Misinformation Effects

• In Event: Misinformation and Marginalization

Abstract

In recent years, scholars of political communication have developed a robust literature focusing on issues of mis- and disinformation in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Among the various perspectives on misinformation advanced have been those focused on individual-level psychological antecedents and consequences of misinformation belief and those focused on the networked flows of misinformation throughout the media system. However, scholars have generally fallen short of theorizing misinformation structurally, opting instead to search for psychological profiles and message features that fuel the sharing and adoption of misinformation. As such, we understand little about how the production, distribution, and reception of misinformation are determined by individuals’ structural positions in society, as well as the structural interrelations of social, economic, and political systems. This article seeks to address this lacuna, drawing on sociological research on pervasive social ambiguity during times of rapid social and technological change, media system dependency theory, and critical disinformation studies to advance a novel theoretical framework for understanding how individuals’ need for social orientation, interdependencies among social and technological systems, and changing power relations within contemporary media ecologies determine how misinformation comes to have effects. This new framework is then illustrated through an extended case study of anti-transgender misinformation in the United States and United Kingdom. Drawing on content analyses of misinformation content across legacy news media and social media in both countries, survey research in the United States, and archival research analyzing documents produced by both pro- and anti-transgender movement organizations, we demonstrate the social-structural origins of anti-trans misinformation and how the structural positions of individuals, communities, and institutions determines whether and, if so, the extent to which they are affected by misinformation exposure. Taken together, this framework and extended case study offer tools for a more robust sociological analysis of misinformation in contemporary Western democracies.

Author

• Thomas J Billard, Northwestern University