Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Chapter 1 -- What Is Disinformation -- Chapter 2 -- Characteristics of Disinformation -- Chapter 3 -- Fighting Disinformation -- Chapter 4 -- Putting Your Skills into Action -- Glossary -- Further Information -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author -- Back Cover.

In recent years there has been increasing attention to the potentially disruptive influence of disinformation on elections. The most common forms of disinformation in elections include the dissemination of 'fake news' in order to discredit opponents or to influence the voting process, the falsification or manipulation of polling data, and the use of fake election monitoring and observation. This article presents an overview of the phenomenon of disinformation in elections in both democratic and undemocratic environments, and discusses measures to reduce its scope and negative impact.

Disinformation can appear in various forms. Firstly, different formats can be manipulated, such as texts, images, and videos. Secondly, the amount and degree of falseness can vary, from completely fabricated content to decontextualized information to satire that intentionally misleads recipients. Therefore, the forms and format of disinformation might vary and differ not only between the supposedly clear categories of "true" and "false". Field of application/theoretical foundation: Studies on types of disinformation are conducted in various fields, e.g. political communication, journalism studies, and media effects studies. Among other things, the studies identify the most common types of mis- or disinformation during certain events (Brennen, Simon, Howard, & Nielsen, 2020), analyze and categorize the behavior of different types of Twitter accounts (Linvill & Warren, 2020), and investigate the existence of serveral types of "junk news" in different national media landscapes (Bradshaw, Howard, Kollanyi, & Neudert, 2020; Neudert, Howard, & Kollanyi, 2019). References/combination with other methods of data collection: Only relatively few studies use combinations of methods. Some studies identify different types of disinformation via qualitative and quantitative content analyses (Bradshaw et al., 2020; Brennen et al., 2020; Linvill & Warren, 2020; Neudert et al., 2019). Others use surveys to analyze respondents' concerns as well as exposure towards different types of mis- and disinformation (Fletcher, 2018). Example studies: Brennen et al. (2020); Bradshaw et al. (2020); Linvill and Warren (2020) Information on example studies: Types of disinformation are defined by the presentation and contextualization of content and sometimes additionally by details (e.g. professionalism) about the communicator. Studies either deductively identify different types of disinformation (Brennen et al., 2020) by applying the theoretical framework by Wardle (2019), or additionally inductively identify and build ...

This study examines people's judgment of what constitutes disinformation, how partisanship shapes such judgment, and how broadness of disinformation judgment relates to perceptions of the disinformation problem and support for anti-disinformation legislation. Analysis of a Hong Kong survey shows that many citizens are willing to treat a wide range of problematic news materials as disinformation. Partisans tend to treat counter-attitudinal materials as disinformation, but the influence of partisanship can be reduced by the norm of evenhandedness. Besides, broadness of disinformation judgment—especially anti-government disinformation judgment—relates positively with the perceived severity and impact of disinformation and support for legislation.

Anti-immigrant disinformation plays a central role in populist and far-right discourses, but it remains a complex object of study. In addition to the definitional challenges posed by disinformation, populism and far-right extremism, it can be difficult to disentangle the intricate overlap of factors that enable the promotion of anti-immigrant disinformation and render audiences receptive to it. To understand these dynamics, this chapter outlines disinformation as a process that engages different actors, platforms, and audiences. It provides an up-to-date analysis of the diverse range of actors who promote anti-immigrant disinformation, explores how platform structures enable anti-immigrant manipulation tactics, and, finally, it contextualises audience receptivity in terms of attitudes towards immigrants and social change. Ultimately, we suggest that efforts to counter anti-immigrant disinformation require multiple overlapping actions that reduce exposure to disinformation while also addressing more deep-seated issues surrounding the crisis of legitimacy within democracy and declining trust in institutions.

Recent research has mainly used two approaches to identify publishers or sources of disinformation: First, alternative media are identified as potential publishers of disinformation. Second, potential publishers of disinformation are identified via fact-checking websites. Samples created using those approaches can partly overlap. However, the two approaches differ in terms of validity and comprehensiveness of the identified population. Sampling of alternative media outlets is theory-driven and allows for cross-national comparison. However, researchers face the challenge to identify misinforming content published by alternative media outlets. In contrast, fact-checked content facilitates the identification of a given disinformation population; however, fact-checker often have a publication bias focusing on a small range of (elite) actors or sources (e.g. individual blogs, hyper partisan news outlets, or politicians). In both approaches it is important to describe, compare and, if possible, assign the outlets to already existing categories in order to enable a temporal and spatial comparison. Approaches to identify sources/publishers: Besides the operationalization of specific variables analyzed in the field of disinformation, the sampling procedure presents a crucial element to operationalize disinformation itself. Following the approach of detecting disinformation through its potential sources or publishers (Li, 2020), research analyzes alternative media (Bachl, 2018; Boberg, Quandt, Schatto-Eckrodt, & Frischlich, 2020; Heft et al., 2020) or identifies a various range of actors or domains via fact-checking sites (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Grinberg et al., (2019); Guess, Nyhan & Reifler, 2018). Those two approaches are explained in the following. Alternative media as sources/publishers The following procedure summarizes the approaches used in current research for the identification of relevant alternative media outlets (following Bachl, 2018; Boberg et al., 2020; Heft et al., 2020). Snowball sampling ...