Behind the black boxes of algorithms promoting or adding friction to posts, technical design decisions made to affect behavior, and institutions stood up to make decisions about content online, it can be easy to lose track of the heteromation involved, the humans spreading disinformation and, on the other side, moderating or choosing not to moderate it. This can be aptly shown in the case of the spread of misinformation on WhatsApp during Brazil’s 2018 general elections. Since WhatsApp runs on a peer-to-peer architecture, there was no algorithm curating content according to the characteristics or demographics of the users, which is how filter bubbles work on Facebook. Instead, a human infrastructure was assembled to create a pro-Bolsonaro environment on WhatsApp and spread misinformation to bolster his candidacy. In this paper, we articulate the labor executed by the human infrastructure of misinformation as hetoromation.

The spread of false and misleading information, hate speech, and harassment on WhatsApp has generated concern about elections, been implicated in ethnic violence, and been linked to other disastrous events across the globe. On WhatsApp, we see the activation of what is known as the phenomenon of hidden virality, which characterizes how unvetted, insular discourse on encrypted, private platforms takes on a character of truth and remains mostly unnoticed until causing real-world harm. In this book chapter, we discuss what factors contribute to the activation of hidden virality on WhatsApp while answering the following questions: 1) To what extent and how do WhatsApp’s sociotechnical affordances encourage the sharing of mis- and disinformation on the platform, and 2) How do WhatsApp’s users perceive and deal with mis- and disinformation daily? Our findings indicate that WhatsApp’s affordance of perceived privacy actively encourages the spread of false and offensive content on the platform, especially when combined with it being impossible for users to report inappropriate content anonymously. Groups in which such content is prominent are tightly controlled by administrators who typically hold dominant cultural positions (e.g., they are senior and male). Users who feel hurt by false and offensive content need to personally ask administrators for its removal. But this is not an easy job, as it requires users to challenge dominant cultural norms, causing them stress and anxiety. Users would rather have WhatsApp take on the burden of moderating problematic content. We close the chapter by situating our findings in relation to cultural and economic power dynamics. We bring attention to the fact that if WhatsApp does not start to take action to reduce and prevent the real-world harm of hidden virality, its affordances of widespread accessibility and encryption will keep promoting its market advantages, leaving the burden of moderating content to fall on minoritized users.

This chapter focuses on how it is possible to develop and retain false beliefs even when the relevant information we receive is not itself misleading or inaccurate. In common usage, the term misinformed refers to someone who holds false beliefs, and the most obvious source of false beliefs is inaccurate information. In some cases, however, false beliefs arise, not from inaccurate or misleading information, but rather from cognitive biases that influence the way that information is interpreted and recalled. Other cognitive biases limit the ability of new and accurate information to correct existing misconceptions. We begin the chapter by examining the role of cognitive biases and heuristics in creating misconceptions, taking as our context misconceptions commonly observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. We then explain why accurate information does not always or necessarily correct misconceptions, and in certain situations can even entrench false beliefs. Throughout the chapter, we outline strategies that information designers can use to reduce the possibility that false beliefs arise from, and persist in the face of, accurate information.

The time lag between when research is completed and when it is used in clinical practice can be as long as two decades. This chapter considers the dissemination and implementation of research findings. It also explores better ways to make research findings understood and used. On the one hand, we recognize the need to get new research into practice as soon as possible. On the other hand, we challenge the trend toward rapid implementation. When results are put into practice prematurely, patients may suffer unnecessary consequences of insufficiently evaluated interventions. We offer several examples of Nobel Prize winning interventions that had unintentional harmful effects that were unknown when the prize was awarded. To address these problems, we support the need for greater transparency in reporting studies results, open access to clinical research data, and the application of statistical tools such as forest plots and funnel plots that might reveal data irregularities.

Reading or writing online user-reviews of places like a restaurant or a hair salon is a common information practice. Through its Local Guides Platform, Google calls on users to add reviews of places directly to Google Maps, as well as edit store hours and report fake reviews. Based on a case study of the platform, this chapter examines the governance structures that delineate the role Local Guides play in regulating the Google Maps information ecosystem and how it frames useful information vs. bad information. We track how the Local Guides Platform constructs a community of insiders who make Google Maps better vs. the misinformation that the platform positions as an exterior threat infiltrating Google Maps universally beneficial global mapping project. Framing our analysis through Kuo and Marwick’s critique of the dominant misinformation paradigm, one often based on hegemonic ideals of truth and authenticity. We argue that review and moderation practices on Local Guides further standardize constructions of misinformation as the product of a small group of outlier bad actors in an otherwise convivial information ecosystem. Instead, we consider how the platform’s governance of crowdsourced moderation, paired with Google Maps’ project of creating a single, universal map, helps to homogenize narratives of space that then further normalize the limited scope of Google’s misinformation paradigm.

Despite Kenya’s transformative and progressive 2010 Constitution, it is still grappling with a hybrid democracy, displaying both authoritarian and democratic traits. Scholars attribute this status to several factors, with a prominent one being the domination of the political order and wielding of political power by a few individuals and families with historical ties to patronage networks and informal power structures. The persisting issues of electoral fraud, widespread corruption, media harassment, weak rule of law and governance challenges further contribute to the hybrid democracy status. While the 2010 Constitution aims to restructure the state and enhance democratic institutions, the transition process is considered incomplete, especially since the judiciary’s role of judicial review is mostly faced with the difficult task of countering democratic regression.

The structure of society is heavily dependent upon its means of producing and distributing information. As its methods of communication change, so does a society. In Europe, for example, the invention of the printing press created what we now call the public sphere. The public sphere, in turn, facilitated the appearance of ‘public opinion’, which made possible wholly new forms of politics and governance, including the democracies we treasure today.

State responses to the recent ‘crisis’ caused by misinformation in social media have mainly aimed to impose liability on those who facilitate its dissemination. Internet companies, especially large platforms, have deployed numerous techniques, measures and instruments to address the phenomenon. However, little has been done to assess the importance of who originates disinformation and, in particular, whether some originators of misinformation are acting contrary to their preexisting obligations to the public. My view is that it would be wrong to attribute only to social media a central or exclusive role in the new disinformation crisis that impacts the information ecosystem.

The 2024 presidential election in the USA demonstrates, with unmistakable clarity, that disinformation (intentionally false information) and misinformation (unintentionally false information disseminated in good faith) pose a real and growing existential threat to democratic self-government in the United States – and elsewhere too. Powered by social media outlets like Facebook (Meta) and Twitter (X), it is now possible to propagate empirically false information to a vast potential audience at virtually no cost. Coupled with the use of highly sophisticated algorithms that carefully target the recipients of disinformation and misinformation, voter manipulation is easier to accomplish than ever before – and frighteningly effective to boot.

The issue of mass disinformation on the Internet is a long-standing concern for policymakers, legislators, academics and the wider public. Disinformation is believed to have had a significant impact on the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. Concern about the threat of foreign – mainly Russian – interference in the democratic process is also growing. The COVID-19 pandemic, which reached global proportions in 2020, gave new impetus to the spread of disinformation, which even put lives at risk. The problem is real and serious enough to force all parties concerned to reassess the previous European understanding of the proper regulation of freedom of expression.

The ‘marketplace of ideas’ metaphor tends to dominate US discourse about the First Amendment and free speech more generally. The metaphor is often deployed to argue that the remedy for harmful speech ought to be counterspeech, not censorship; listeners are to be trusted to sort the wheat from the chaff. This deep skepticism about the regulation of even harmful speech in the USA raises several follow-on questions, including: How will trustworthy sources of information fare in the marketplace of ideas? And how will participants know whom to trust? Both questions implicate non-regulatory, civil-society responses to mis- and disinformation.

In April 2023, the Government of India amended a set of regulations called the Information Technology Rules, which primarily dealt with issues around online intermediary liability and safe harbour. Until 2023, these rules required online intermediaries to take all reasonable efforts to ensure that ‘fake, false or misleading’ information was not published on their platforms. Previous iterations of these rules had already been challenged before the Indian courts for imposing a disproportionate burden on intermediaries, and having the effect of chilling online speech. Now, the 2023 Amendment went even further: it introduced an entity called a ‘Fact Check Unit’, to be created by the government. This government-created unit would flag information that – in its view – was ‘fake, false or misleading’ with respect to ‘the business of the central government’.

The attentive public widely believes a false proposition, namely, that the race Implicit Association Test (“IAT”) measures unconscious bias within individuals that causes discriminatory behavior. We document how prominent social psychologists created this misconception and the field helped perpetuate it for years, while skeptics were portrayed as a small group of non-experts with questionable motives. When a group highly values a goal and leaders of the group reward commitment to that goal while marginalizing dissent, the group will often go too far before it realizes that it has gone too far. To avoid the sort of groupthink that produced the mismatch between what science now knows about the race IAT and what the public believes, social psychologists need to self-consciously embrace skepticism when evaluating claims consistent with their beliefs and values, and governing bodies need to put in place mechanisms that ensure that official pronouncements on policy issues, such as white papers and amicus briefs, are the product of rigorous and balanced reviews of the scientific evidence and its limitations.