Misinformation and Its Malcontents

It has become conventional wisdom that we are living in a “post-truth” era.” Although misinformation has been around for a long time (Bernstein Reference Bernstein2021; Osman Reference Osman2024), it burst into public consciousness as a seemingly novel threat following the dual shocks of Brexit and Trump’s electoral victory in 2016. As the ramifications of these two political earthquakes became clear amid the global populist wave, commentators warned about the threat that fake news, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories pose to democratic discourse. In 2016, Oxford Dictionaries named “post-truth” the word of the year. Books for the general public addressed these concerns, with titles such as Post-Truth (D’Ancona Reference D’Ancona2017), Fantasyland (Andersen Reference Andersen2018), The Death of Truth (Kakutani Reference Kakutani2019), and The Misinformation Age (O’Connor and Weatherall Reference O’Connor and Weatherall2019). A UN resolution from December 2021 focused on “countering disinformation for the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms” (United Nations 2021). As late as 2024, the World Economic Forum identified misinformation and disinformation the “top immediate risk to the global economy” (Chan Reference Chan2024).

Public attitudes have followed accordingly. In a 2018 Eurobarometer survey, 85% of respondents said online fake news is a problem in their country, and 83% agreed it was a problem for democracy (European Commission 2018). A 2020 Pew poll from the United States found that 75% believed it was very or somewhat likely that Russia or other foreign governments would attempt to influence that year’s presidential election (Hartig Reference Hartig2020). According to a 2022 Pew multicountry survey, 70% overall thought the spread of false information online was a major threat, with figures in Germany of 75%, France 74%, Italy 77%, and the United States 70% (Thompson Reference Thompson2022). And a 2023 survey found that 58% of Americans believed AI would increase the volume of misinformation in the 2024 election (Swenson and O’Brien Reference Swenson and O’Brien2023).

Yet these perspectives have not gone unchallenged. Donald Trump notoriously countered the revelation of fake news during the 2016 election by accusing critics of spreading “fake news” (Ross and Rivers Reference Ross and Rivers2018). Legislators, activists, and online personalities, predominantly on the political right, argued that their communications were being suppressed for ideological reasons. Surveys in Europe mirrored those in the United States in showing that conservative and anti-establishment voters are distrustful of fact-checking (Lyons et al. Reference Lyons, Mérola, Reifler and Stoeckel2020). In the United States, pushback against countering misinformation led to lawsuits and congressional investigations of academic misinformation experts (Myers and Frenkel Reference Myers and Frenkel2023).

The scholarly literature has followed a similar trajectory to the public debate, with a surge of works identifying misinformation as a problem and proposing solutions, followed by bouts of skepticism about the claims and implications of the first wave of studies. Studies proliferated in fields such as psychology, political science, economics, communication, and computational social science that demonstrated people’s susceptibility to misinformation and “fake news” (Allcott and Gentzkow Reference Allcott and Gentzkow2017; Martel, Pennycook, and Rand Reference Martel, Pennycook and Rand2020; Muhammed and Mathew Reference Muhammed and Mathew2022; Pennycook and Rand Reference Pennycook and Rand2021; Scheufele and Krause Reference Scheufele and Krause2019; Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral Reference Vosoughi, Roy and Aral2018) and proposing ways to counter it (Ecker et al. Reference Ecker, Lewandowsky, Cook, Schmid, Fazio, Brashier, Kendeou, Vraga and Amazeen2022; Lewandowsky et al. Reference Lewandowsky, Ullrich, Seifert, Schwarz and Cook2012; Lewandowsky and Van Der Linden Reference Lewandowsky and Van Der Linden2021; Pennycook, Cannon, and Rand Reference Pennycook, Cannon and Rand2018; Pennycook and Rand Reference Pennycook and Rand2019).

Yet some scholars critiqued the dominant narrative that misinformation was widespread and problematic. Some raised doubts about the most exaggerated claims about misinformation, seeing them as a category error or moral panic (Bratich Reference Bratich2020; Carlson Reference Carlson2020; Coady Reference Coady, Bernecker, Flowerree and Grundmann2021; Jungherr and Schroeder Reference Jungherr and Schroeder2021). Others questioned the reputed novelty of misinformation or its effects, given people’s relatively low exposure to it online and the barriers to persuasion (Adams et al. Reference Adams, Osman, Bechlivanidis and Meder2023; Allcott and Gentzkow Reference Allcott and Gentzkow2017; Allcott, Gentzkow, and Yu Reference Allcott, Gentzkow and Yu2019; Altay, Berriche, and Acerbi Reference Altay, Berriche and Acerbi2023; Guess, Nyhan, and Riefler Reference Guess, Nyhan and Reifler2018; Scheufele, Krause, and Freiling Reference Scheufele, Krause and Freiling2021). Yet others warned that potential responses to disinformation could be worse than the problem they purported to solve (Freiling, Krause, and Scheufele Reference Freiling, Krause and Scheufele2023; Jones-Jang, Kim, and Kenski Reference Jones-Jang, Kim and Kenski2021; Jungherr and Rauchfleisch Reference Jungherr and Rauchfleisch2024).

Some critical responses to the first wave of misinformation research took aim at institutions, pointing out that (democratic) governments themselves have long spread disinformation in tandem with a complicit press, sometimes at the expense of communities of color (Coady Reference Coady, Bernecker, Flowerree and Grundmann2021; Farkas and Schou Reference Farkas and Schou2019; Kuo and Marwick Reference Kuo and Marwick2021). Others alleged that centrist political interests and technology companies exaggerate the threat of misinformation to minimize their own culpability for social problems and to justify their power (Bernstein Reference Bernstein2021; Bratich Reference Bratich2020; Carlson Reference Carlson2020; Williams Reference Williams2023).

This critical scholarship, by pointing out weaknesses in the early political, journalistic, and scholarly narratives about misinformation, suggests how the collective understanding of the phenomenon has evolved. However, this work does not systematically theorize about the interaction of the contending parties or consider how claims and counterclaims about misinformation are iterative and extend over time. Additionally, the focus on contested facts as the object of most analyses misses the battles taking place in the arena of public discourse, where actors compete not only to proclaim their opinions about “facts” but also to assert their authority to make definitive judgments about (mis)information.

The Constitution of Coalitions

Who sets the terms of debate over misinformation—what it is, how much there is, whether it is a problem, and what to do about it? An inchoate assemblage of researchers and practitioners who were alarmed by the Brexit result and Trump’s unexpected presidency took the initiative to frame misinformation as a problem and claim authority over how to counter it. Subsequently, two groups of critics emerged that rejected the dominant consensus but for different reasons. These three coalitions reflect broad affinities among actors relating to their stances on misinformation and can be distinguished by examining their institutional position, political ideologies, and epistemological approaches.Footnote ⁴ This section explains how each of these factors implies a particular perspective toward information and its circulation in the public sphere. The next section describes the composition of the coalitions and shows how they articulate those stances.

Institutional position refers to how an actor is situated in relation to the dominant political, economic, and cultural forces in a system (Fligstein and McAdam Reference Fligstein and McAdam2015, 13). A coalition’s position is stronger if it has support from the state, which confers legitimacy on other actors and enforces rules of interaction (68–70). Other institutional forces include financial institutions and actors who control a disproportionate amount of societal resources, as well as cultural elites who are influential in shaping the discourse and dominant norms (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1998, Reference Bourdieu and Granovetter2018).

Although influential political, economic, and cultural institutions do not necessarily share the same political ideology, they can be expected to work toward maintaining the machinery and legitimacy of the system of which they are part (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu and Granovetter2018). In a democracy, this alignment means that the actors in question will stake out positions they believe are favorable toward sustaining democracy. In practice, working to maintain the values of the system—a normative commitment—may conveniently align with the self-interest of actors to maintain the institutional hierarchy of the system and lock in their power within it (Emirbayer and Johnson Reference Emirbayer and Johnson2008; Fligstein and McAdam Reference Fligstein and McAdam2015). Powerful actors also have the means to shape the public agenda in ways that suit their interests (Birkland Reference Birkland, Fischer and Miller2017). They would therefore be expected to defend the rules governing the production and flow of information that enable them to maintain their position.

A second consideration when it comes to misinformation is political ideology. Rather than act to maintain their position in a system (or undermine that of others), coalitions can be characterized by common beliefs about how the political system should operate. Actors seek to advance their ideological interests, usually conceived of in terms of a left–right spectrum, by gaining discursive advantage over ideological rivals and influencing public policy (Snow Reference Snow, Snow, Soule and Kriesi2004).

Historically, a liberal view on information has been associated with promoting openness and free speech as the best way to protect dissenters with unpopular opinions from powerful interests seeking to thwart demands for greater equality (Shiffrin Reference Shiffrin1990). Conservatives were more prone to stifle speech that threatens hierarchy and social order (DelFattore Reference DelFattore1992). These stances were largely reversed owing to a decades-long project by the American right to undermine and supplant the traditional media (Hemmer Reference Hemmer2016). The weakening of news gatekeepers and the development of alternative media companies and personalities gave rise to a self-contained media ecosystem that spread right-wing political views on radio, television, and online (Benkler, Faris, and Roberts Reference Benkler, Faris and Roberts2018; Bennett and Livingston Reference Bennett and Livingston2018).Footnote ⁵ It enabled conservatives to propagate their messages to enthusiastic audiences and assail their political rivals without being subject to the rigors of fact-checking or basic journalistic norms. The populist right benefited from and thus sought to preserve an unfettered internet, whose affordances it effectively leveraged to mobilize conservative voters (Tripodi Reference Tripodi2022), whereas institutionalists, ranging ideologically from the left to the center-right, favored regulation of online information to protect the institutions under attack (HowTheyVote.eu 2022).

A third factor is epistemological approaches to assessing (mis-)information.Footnote ⁶ There is an elective affinity between institutional position, political ideology, and preferred epistemological approach. Those who aim to maintain the (democratic) system place faith in the existing methods by which knowledge-producing institutions assess evidence and communicate their conclusions. They rely on well-established procedures and conventions practiced by experts in their field: transparency and replication in science, neutrality in weighing evidence and adversarial justice in the legal system, and investigating and fact-checking in journalism (Bertsou and Caramani Reference Bertsou and Caramani2022).

By contrast, the populist right attacks the legitimacy of institutions and rule by technocrats while granting authority to alternative evidence and uncredentialed “experts” (Caramani Reference Caramani2017; Collins et al. Reference Collins, Evans, Durant, Weinel, Eyal and Medvetz2023; Ylä-Anttila Reference Ylä-Anttila2018). This populist epistemology sees wisdom in popular experience rather than professional credentials and encourages engagement from ordinary social media users, who can circumvent traditional gatekeepers when spreading their (or others’) ideas (Harambam and Aupers Reference Harambam and Aupers2015; Mede and Schäfer Reference Mede and Schäfer2020). Political opportunists may also use populism as a smokescreen by selectively invoking conventional forms of expertise when expedient, despite their professed disdain for elites (Guasti and Buštíková Reference Guasti and Buštíková2020).

Contesting Authority over Misinformation: Incumbents, Challengers, and Skeptics

We can now specify how distinct coalitions of actors coalesced to engage with misinformation based on where they were situated in the landscape of institutional position, ideology, and epistemology. In 2016, a group heavily represented by elected officials, intelligence agencies, business leaders, NGOs, academic institutions, and the media in the United States and Europe depicted misinformation as widespread and consequential, arguing that it posed a threat to open debate and deliberation. I refer to this coalition as incumbents: “actors who wield disproportionate influence within a field and whose interests and views tend to be heavily reflected in the dominant organization” (Fligstein and McAdam Reference Fligstein and McAdam2015, 13). Coming from a broad swath of dominant authoritative institutions, they formulate policy (governments), protect national security (military and intelligence agencies), communicate with the public (politicians and the media), and engage in research (government agencies and academia; Arnoldi Reference Arnoldi, Eyal and Medvetz2023). Early advocacy by policy makers and the media was effective in raising awareness of the problem and prodding reluctant actors in the technology sector to take it seriously (Kurtzleben Reference Kurtzleben2018; Rawlinson Reference Rawlinson2017). Nonprofit fact-checking groups consolidated into consortia and became part of the incumbent coalition (“EDMO—United against Disinformation” n.d.; Poynter 2024).

The incumbent coalition’s discursive unity stemmed in large part from its members’ normative commitments to democracy, which they argued was threatened by the proliferation of misinformation. The EU, responding to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, created the East StratCom Task Force in 2015 to “forecast, address, and respond to Russia’s disinformation campaigns.”Footnote ⁷ President Obama laid out an early marker of the discourse in the United States in a 2016 press conference with German chancellor Angela Merkel, calling misinformation a threat to “democratic freedoms and market-based economies and prosperity that we’ve come to take for granted” (Solon Reference Solon2016). Officials, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and National Security Agency director Mike Rogers publicly endorsed the idea that Russia’s hacking operation threatened democracy (“Foreign Cyber Threats” 2017; “NSA Chief” 2016). Because the twin shocks of Trump and Brexit benefited the political right, US Democrats were early advocates of the issue, including Hillary Clinton, who called fake news an “epidemic” (Merica Reference Merica2016). Yet the network expanded to become bipartisan, including Republicans such as Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham (“Foreign Cyber Threats” 2017),Footnote ⁸ and it encompassed European parties and politicians on the center-left and center-right.Footnote ⁹ The coalition was transnational, emerging in Western democracies but also involving collaboration with activists and fact-checkers around the world, including in nondemocratic states (Stencel Reference Stencel2019).

Incumbents’ dominant institutional position was closely connected with their role in the production and dissemination of knowledge, a form of credibility they leveraged as they worked to construct a conception of misinformation as the type of problem they were well suited to address (Bacchi Reference Bacchi2009; Sending Reference Sending2015). To assert their authority, they marshaled and repurposed their competence in tasks like data analysis and coding, collecting and analyzing foreign intelligence, and pursuing accountability and verifying sources, backed by academic degrees in statistics, psychology, computer science, communications, and journalism.Footnote ¹⁰ Incumbents in different sectors and countries would collaborate, present their ideas at conferences, support each other financially, and publicly echo one another’s arguments.Footnote ¹¹ Collectively, they produced numerous reports, speeches, research studies, position papers, media stories, and testimony at legislative hearings, which were amplified in the mass media (Couldry Reference Couldry2003)Footnote ¹²—an institution that saw its own interests threatened by misinformation (Waisbord 2018).

The success of incumbents in naming and framing the problem was evident in the sharp rise of “fake news” in media mentions and on Google searches starting in early 2017; the increase of “misinformation” in 2019, which peaked in the second half of 2022; and public concern captured in opinion surveys (Hameleers, Brosius, and de Vreese Reference Hameleers, Brosius and de Vreese2021).Footnote ¹³ Yet several questions remained unanswered: On what authority did misinformation experts act? Who granted that authority? And why should people deem their authority legitimate? Conventionally, authority derives from perceived competence and expertise, which in turn derive from qualities like specialized knowledge, experience, and education (Avant, Finnemore, and Sell Reference Avant, Finnemore and Sell2010, 12). Policy makers tend to defer to experts to define their interests in situations of high uncertainty (Radaelli Reference Radaelli1999; Zito Reference Zito2001), for which misinformation in the late 2010s arguably qualifies. Yet misinformation, although not a new problem, was still in formation as a field of scholarship and policy. Authority was contingent, rather than foreordained.

It is not surprising, therefore, that incumbents were challenged. One line of attack centered on their overweening financial, political, cultural, and symbolic power. It was evident that incumbents wielded enormous resources relating to information, including access to secret intelligence and forensic tools (governments and spy agencies); the ability to propagate, throttle, or conceal the information people produce online (tech companies); data analysis for descriptive and explanatory purposes (academia); and the wherewithal to broadcast news and opinions to the public (media). From a democratic pluralist perspective, incumbents’ sheer might, ubiquity, and the perception of consensus raised concerns about the lack of countervailing power and barriers to dissenting opinions being taken seriously. In an era of distrust of elites, they appeared to exemplify that elite (Collins et al. Reference Collins, Evans, Durant, Weinel, Eyal and Medvetz2023; Eyal Reference Eyal2019).

Other doubts about incumbents involved hubris and potential conflicts of interest. Some actors used their authority to offer opinions outside their areas of expertise, as when politicians spoke with the authority of epidemiologists to debunk questionable claims about COVID or journalists pontificated on algorithms controlling social media feeds (Crovitz Reference Crovitz2019; Lavazza and Farina Reference Lavazza and Farina2020). Some critics noted incumbents’ tendency to make unambiguous judgments about (mis)information even when corresponding scientific research was unsettled rather than definitive (Vraga and Bode Reference Vraga and Bode2020). And critics raised concerns about whether self-interest might influence incumbents’ diagnoses or shade their policy recommendations (May Reference May2021).

These critiques were leveled predominantly by two sets of actors. First were challengers, who rejected the premise of misinformation articulated by incumbents and represent populist and illiberal—and usually far-right—political interests. They comprised a coalition of politicians, media personalities, businesspeople, and online influencers, predominantly based in the United States, who aimed to undermine the authority claims of incumbents and shape the rules governing the public sphere in their favor. Although they posed as institutional outsiders, their most prominent representatives came from privileged positions, exemplified by Elon Musk (the world’s richest person) and Tucker Carlson (one of the most popular right-wing media figures). Yet other exponents of these views were socially marginalized in society’s dominant institutions because of their extreme religiosity or fringe views (Adler-Bell Reference Adler-Bell2022b). Challengers’ antisystemic positioning within democracies aligned them with leaders in authoritarian states such as Vladimir Putin in Russia and Viktor Orban in Hungary. They and other incumbent autocrats were engaged in building alternative knowledge-producing institutions that reflected their regimes’ illiberal valuesFootnote ¹⁴ (Yablokov and Chatterje-Doody Reference Yablokov and Chatterje-Doody2021) and were eager to collaborate with illiberal movements abroad to undermine the liberal order (Abrahamsen et al. Reference Abrahamsen, Drolet, Williams, Vucetic, Narita and Gheciu2024; Adler-Nissen and Zarakol Reference Adler-Nissen and Zarakol2020).

Challengers’ contestation around misinformation dovetailed with their disdain for authoritative institutions and their aim of displacing incumbents—and the pro-democratic and left/centrist political interests they represent—from power. Intellectuals of the New Right leveled a Gramscian critique of incumbents’ overweening influence and left-centrist ideology, which they maintained allows incumbents to shape the ideological discourse through their presence in the media, academia, and bureaucracy (Abrahamsen et al. Reference Abrahamsen, Drolet, Williams, Vucetic, Narita and Gheciu2024). Right-wing activists such as libertarian tech financier Peter Thiel and Breitbart News founder and Trump adviser Steve Bannon worked to build an intellectual infrastructure for this project in the Trump era, alongside allied think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the Claremont Institute, and the Bradley Foundation (“In Preparation for Power” 2022; Mayer Reference Mayer2021).

Challengers drew on a decades-long attack on institutionalized expertise to call into question incumbents’ credentials and claims of authority over misinformation. Right-wing online personalities such as Alex Jones, Jack Posobiec, and Lara Loomer alleged that incumbents were intent on censoring conservatives; they mobilized their large followings to put pressure on elected officials to embrace their claims (Fandos Reference Fandos2018). That liberals aimed to suppress conservative voices online, in league with their ostensible allies in universities and the tech sector in Silicon Valley, soon became an article of faith among Republican legislators, spearheaded by Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley. In Europe, although anti-incumbent narratives were not as pervasive, right-wing populist parties such as France’s National Rally, Spain’s Vox, and Poland’s PiS articulated similar views criticizing fact-checking or Silicon Valley’s supposed censorship of conservative opinion (Charlish and Wlodarczak-Semczuk Reference Charlish and Wlodarczak-Semczuk2021; Luque Reference Luque2020; Pollet Reference Pollet2022).

In contrast to challengers, skeptics generally share the same liberal-democratic values as incumbents but do not necessarily accept incumbents’ premises, interpretations, or the implications thereof.Footnote ¹⁵ They comprise academic and independent critics in the United States and Europe who, although inhabiting some of the same institutions as incumbents, harbor a distrust of overweening power, which is evident in their suspicion of the (national security) state and skepticism toward narratives that privilege certain political or financial interests (Coady Reference Coady, Bernecker, Flowerree and Grundmann2021; Williams Reference Williams2023). Self-avowed classical liberals, such as academics Steven Pinker, Niall Ferguson, Richard Dawkins, and Jonathan Haidt, and neuroscientist Sam Harris were vocal opponents of what they deemed overly sensitive and censorious restrictions of speech on the left, especially on college campuses. Unlike challengers, skeptics do not allege that incumbents necessarily harbor malign intentions, but they are cognizant of the potential for hubris or institutional or psychological biases when it comes to collecting evidence and interpreting data (Kuo and Marwick Reference Kuo and Marwick2021; May Reference May2021). They do not question the authority of experts as such but instead raise doubts about transparency, bias, misinterpretation, and exaggeration (Friedman Reference Friedman and Gunn2022; Uscinski Reference Uscinski2023; Williams Reference Williams2023). Because skeptics’ views on information tend to emerge in response to (overwrought) incumbent claims, they often end up superficially aligned with challengers. Yet skeptics reject what they consider the bad-faith and bullying tactics of challengers when they target incumbents (Adler-Bell Reference Adler-Bell2022a). As such, skeptics address the shortcomings of both incumbents and challengers, and they contribute to shaping the public discourse.

The Coherence of Coalitions

This sorting exercise necessarily makes broad sociological claims that simplify a more complex reality. There are ambiguities at the boundaries of coalitions due to overlapping perspectives between incumbents and skeptics (who are both classically liberal) and between skeptics and challengers (both of whom are critical of incumbent power). The coalition an individual aligns with may depend on the issue, whether it be elections, climate change, or vaccine efficacy, and there are inevitably disagreements among actors within the same coalition. Scholars in the incumbent camp might, for example, critique the epistemological or methodological choices of other incumbents researching the same topic even while they push back against skeptics and challengers (Khazarian, Jalbert, and Dash Reference Khazarlain, Jalbert and Dash2024).

Furthermore, we cannot map actors’ institutional belonging automatically onto their coalitional affiliation. For example, academics and journalists, although they share professional and social backgrounds with (other) incumbents, have incentives to produce original ideas that may override their assumed coalitional affinities. Tech companies pose a different problem for categorization, because their positions shifted with the political and financial winds. Initially dismissive of the notion that misinformation was a problem, social media companies responded to incumbent criticism by embracing content moderation and investing heavily in trust and safety operations. However, after receiving political pushback from challengers and suffering a decline in tech investment, they became less likely to embrace incumbent narratives and returned to their previous laissez-faire approach. The most extreme example of this evolution is Elon Musk, who arguably became the foremost spokesperson for the challengers after he bought Twitter (Ortutay Reference Ortutay2024).

Despite these qualifications, this categorization represents an important conceptual intervention. It offers to bring clarity to an often-muddled picture by highlighting the strong nexus of power, ideology, and discourse on the topic of misinformation whereby contending actors found themselves in the same constellation significantly more often than they diverged. These overlapping affinities led coalitions to take consistent stances toward misinformation over time and position themselves distinctly in relation to the other coalitions. This becomes evident when we examine how actors put forward their arguments.

Disaggregating Misinformation Domains: A Framework

Having established the standpoints of the three coalitions, this section lays out a framework for understanding how they engage in relation to one another. To demonstrate their distinct rationales and rhetorical tactics, I disaggregate misinformation into distinct domains: content, attribution, prevalence, consequences, and policies.Footnote ¹⁶ The way contestation plays out within a domain depends on whether it is more conducive to credentialed expertise or lay interpretation. Depending on the domain, incumbents, challengers, and skeptics find themselves engaged in either symmetric or asymmetric contests based on their preferred epistemological stances and methodological approaches.

According to their foundational premise, incumbents view misinformation as a problem subject to technical analysis. It is, to them, the province of skilled experts applying methods based on training and experience, whether quantitative or analytical, to make categorical assessments. A technical approach effectively denies the input of people who lack relevant skills, seeing them as passive consumers of expert judgments, rather than as active participants with a role in shaping them. Incumbents aim to remove questions about misinformation from the realm of politics. Implicitly, they depict their authority as value-neutral and, in some instances, endorse a rigorous scientific approach to assessing online information more akin to studying the physical world than complex and contested social problems (Shu et al. Reference Shu, Cui, Wang, Lee and Liu2019; Zhou and Zafarani Reference Zhou and Zafarani2020).

Challengers, in contrast, question assertions of conventional expertise and embrace subversive forms of knowledge production. Their preferred mode of analysis removes authority from the dominion of credentialed expertise and expands the range of actors who can legitimately contribute to the discourse. This may be embodied in two ways, depending on what mode of argumentation best advances their argument. First, they may invoke conventional populist tropes that privilege popular wisdom over expert consensus and accept unfounded assertions, folk (and conspiracy) theories, and emotions as legitimate forms of claims-making. Second, they may rely on alternative “experts,” who either lack formal credentials or—potentially more persuasively—have the degrees and training of incumbents but advocate heterodox views that place them far from the mainstream of the profession. For example, journalist Lara Logan used her credibility as a former CBS News reporter to spread conspiracy theories on far-right media platforms (Peters Reference Peters2022). Lieutenant General Michael Flynn traded on his career in national intelligence when he championed claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

When evaluating how contestation takes place, I refer to symmetric or asymmetric contests, not to gauge who “wins” or “loses” an imagined audience but to examine how and to whom the contestation is pitched. Do incumbents make their claims unopposed, or are they challenged? Do detractors use ostensibly similar evidentiary standards and reasoning as incumbents do? Do fights play out in mainstream venues where all sides attempt to persuade neutral observers, or do actors focus on appealing to their core supporters? The analysis is not primarily concerned with the effects of these contests, which are difficult to gauge, although public opinion surveys can shed light on overall attitudes.

Although incumbents assert primacy in all domains, contestation in some domains is close to being symmetric. When it comes to evaluating the content of a claim—that is, discerning its factuality—the coalitions engage on the same terms and appeal to the same audiences. They deploy evidence available to the public and refer to knowledge produced by other authorities, whether scientific, medical, investigative, or otherwise—even though they may prefer different sources of evidence and interpret it differently. Likewise, when it comes to policy—how policy makers should respond to misinformation—actors compete in the same arena to shape public attitudes. Because policy preferences rest in part on values and ideological beliefs, incumbents face a natural impediment in their efforts to claim exclusive authority.

On the issues of attribution (Who is responsible?) and prevalence (How widespread is it?), incumbents have an intrinsic claim to authority due to the nonpublic nature of the data and the sophisticated techniques required to conduct analysis. Challengers therefore contest asymmetrically, relying on other modes of critique to make their case: questioning the motives or credibility of incumbent claimants or privileging populist modes of reasoning. They typically do not marshal sources of evidence that directly challenge incumbent claims. Finally, assessing consequences (What problems does it cause?) lies somewhere in between the extremes. Some questions are conducive to technical expertise and analysis, but the challenge of establishing causality and the value judgments required to appraise consequences place it more in the realm of symmetrical contestation.

Table 1 outlines a schema showing how the three coalitions publicly frame, claim, and contest on the five domains of misinformation: content, attribution, prevalence, consequences, and policies. Distinguishing the stances of relevant actors on these dimensions is critical to gaining clarity about the relationship among disputes over (mis)information, epistemological competence, and contests over authority.

Table 1

Coalitions and Positions

Case Study: Contesting Misinformation Claims about COVID-19

How does discursive contestation unfold in these domains in practice? I anchor the empirical analysis in contentious debates in the United States about the COVID-19 pandemic, primarily in 2020 and 2021 when it emerged as a serious public health threat. This relatively bounded period began at a moment when the incumbent position was well established, but skeptics and challengers had already entered the fray. The outbreak of a novel virus provoked difficult and unsettled questions about science, medicine, and public policy, which incumbents tried to address. Yet the pandemic occurred at a moment of media fragmentation and populist ascendancy and produced a wealth of claims that were propagated, debunked, and contested, placing misinformation at the center of many public debates. The stakes were high: personal and policy decisions about masking, social distancing, and vaccine uptake had life-and-death implications.

The implications of the case study are limited in place and time. Although the coalitions as described are constituted transnationally, COVID policies were made at the national level, and contestation was waged in the United States primarily with domestic audiences in mind. Responses to the pandemic were often politicized, and messages put out by scientists, public health officials, and journalists warning the public against the threat of misinformation were challenged online and incorporated into the partisan narratives and political agendas prevalent at that moment. Because the pandemic foregrounded scientific and health expertise, the case might not generalize to contested episodes about other issues. Additionally, the evolution of the public discourse and the changing balance of power among the coalitions mean that these dynamics were subject to change. The developments covered here represent only a snapshot of a longer process.

Conclusion: The Protean Politics of Misinformation

This article has presented a framework to make sense of the sudden emergence of misinformation as a social and political problem a decade ago, followed by an intermittent but sometimes concerted backlash against the dominant actors and their claims. Although frequently subsumed into a simple left–right ideological binary, such an approach overlooks the broader and more consequential struggles over knowledge and authority. This article’s framework, by disaggregating differing approaches to misinformation and the components of misinformation itself, helps make sense of the discursive contests that play out in the public sphere. The division into coalitions maps onto a pro-establishment/anti-establishment political cleavage, rather than the more conventional left–right division (Uscinski et al. Reference Uscinski, Enders, Seelig, Klofstad, Funchion, Everett, Wuchty, Premaratne and Murthi2021), with the addition of one faction (skeptics) that is ideologically aligned with the pro-establishment camp but epistemologically more agnostic. Although the framework addresses stances on misinformation, the tripartite division also reflects perspectives on other contentious matters central to democracy, including race and identity, science—evident in the COVID debate—and foreign policy.

This framework can be applied to these (or other) issue areas to ascertain how coalitions assert or contest misinformation claims. To do so, it is important for researchers to identify who is labeling a particular claim or line of thinking as misinformation and what authority—scientific, institutional, or ideological—they draw on to do so. They should examine who challenges that label, noting whether they provide counter-evidence, appeal to alternative sources of credibility, or frame the label itself as a tool of political control or censorship. Another analytic move is to determine whether actors signal allegiance to specific political factions or whether they present their arguments as neutral, grassroots, or “common sense.” This will enable an analysis of how these dynamics play out across different domains (content, attribution, prevalence, consequences, and policy) and media ecosystems and how they reflect broader ideological commitments regarding truth, expertise, and critical inquiry.

This article yields three main insights into contention about misinformation. First, claims and counterclaims about misinformation are proxy fights over power, which accounts for why contention over social media posts can become so virulent. At issue is not simply whose facts are right but also who should have the authority to decide which facts are right and, ultimately, who has the right to engage in the public sphere. The stakes become apparent when incumbents advocate for the spreaders of misinformation to be downgraded in social media feeds or de-platformed and when challengers target incumbents through ad hominem attacks, conspiracy theories, and intimidation.

Second, clashes that are apparently political are nonetheless fought in epistemological and methodological trenches. At issue is what kinds of knowledge are best suited to make claims about misinformation. Incumbents assert authority based on training and standardized procedures. Challengers favor populist sources of knowledge—the idea that laypeople can access the truth—over “elitist” scientific evidence or promote the claims of alternative or uncredentialed “experts.” Yet on some questions, notably in the domains of content and policy, judgments came down to subjective interpretation based on normative principles. Incumbents have at times arguably strayed beyond their remit, making claims about misinformation even when such a verdict was not warranted by available evidence. Although it is tempting to dismiss the motives and methods of challengers, in instances in which incumbents offered certainty where humility was called for, as in the “lab leak” theory of COVID-19, skeptics and challengers exposed the dangers of groupthink and lack of curiosity among the scientifically credentialed. Their success was evident when incumbents were forced to admit they had overreached. Similarly, when it comes to policy, value judgments come into play as much as evidence, because there is no objective way to weigh the trade-off between unbridled speech and real or conjectured societal harms.

Third, although contenders may act on sincerely held philosophical principles, they also have self-serving motives when it comes to how the circulation of misinformation affects them. Incumbents have an interest in minimizing unwarranted criticism not only because it could degrade the quality of democratic discourse but also because it threatens to undermine their cultural and political power and their ability to enact their favored policies. As the frequent targets of illiberal populists, incumbents have an interest in accusing their accusers of spreading disinformation, even when the evidence for such accusations is uncertain (Uscinski Reference Uscinski2023). By the same token, illiberal challengers are also motivated by self-interest: they stand to benefit from (particular forms of) misinformation. Most egregiously, insurgent opponents of liberal democracy have disseminated false claims to cast doubt on the integrity of democratic elections because they believed it will help win them power (Starbird, DiResta, and DeButts Reference Starbird, DiResta and DeButts2023).

If misinformation contention is a proxy fight to establish authority in the new information dispensation, what is the state of that authority? Credentialed expertise does not automatically imbue individuals or organizations with legitimate authority, yet cultural power has staying power. Incumbents, for all the populist hostility they provoke, have been able to convince the majority of the US public that misinformation is widespread and, as recently as 2023, that the government or tech companies should restrict false information online (St. Aubin and Liedke Reference St. Aubin and Liedke2023). In Europe, the Digital Services Act represents a consensus among EU member states to subject large online platforms to outside scrutiny.

In the United States, however, challengers have made serious inroads in eroding the position of incumbents. The clarion that experts are intent on censoring their critics has resonated despite widespread acceptance that misinformation is a problem. Incumbents are divided as they debate the legal and ethical nuances of remedies such as algorithmic transparency, labeling, and media literacy training. Skeptics offer potentially constructive criticism aimed at preserving their vision of democracy. Meanwhile, challengers feed on the prevailing public distrust of elites to attack incumbents and appeal to underdog sentiments. This resistance has had concrete political consequences: first, a retrenchment by technology companies in their efforts to identify, label, and remove “harmful” content (Nix and Ellison Reference Nix and Ellison2023); and second, the construction of rival institutions to authoritatively assess claims from an illiberal perspective.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of challengers is their impact in pressuring large social media companies, which had previously rhetorically embraced the notion that misinformation was harmful, to change course. Before 2016, companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allowed users to post on their platforms with only minimal restrictions. They conceded to the critics of Russia’s disinformation campaign against Hillary Clinton by embracing fact-checking and more aggressively removing content deemed harmful according to shifting criteria. Yet their actions were limited due to First Amendment protections of most speech in the United States (Wu Reference Wu2018), and the expenses associated with content moderation ate into their profits. By 2023, facing reduced investor enthusiasm and enjoying political cover from Republicans in Congress, they began allowing previously prohibited categories of content to circulate without restriction and sharply reduced their trust and safety teams and partnerships with fact-checking groups; Mark Zuckerberg even disavowed Facebook’s past practices he described as “censorship” (Frenkel and Isaac Reference Frenkel and Isaac2025; McCorvey Reference McCorvey2023; YouTube Team 2023). Meanwhile, the EU’s efforts to regulate content face resistance from US-based companies targeted for enforcement (Windwehr Reference Windwehr2025).

As the Republican Party has embraced illiberal populism, it has invested in building alternative institutions to proactively disseminate its ideas beyond its core supporters, via social media platforms, fact-checking groups, think tanks, and nonprofit organizations.Footnote ¹⁷ This project has enjoyed support from party officials and donors and is part of a larger transnational network of far-right populists who collaborate to counter liberal ideas (Abrahamsen et al. Reference Abrahamsen, Drolet, Williams, Vucetic, Narita and Gheciu2024; Garamvolgyi and Walker Reference Garamvolgyi and Walker2023). Alongside this effort, challengers have taken a more direct path toward winning the public discursive war: gaining control over the state and wielding its powers for political gain. With Trump’s return to power, this project appeared poised for success. One of his Inauguration Day executive orders echoed familiar far-right discourse by ordering the federal government to favor free speech and end “censorship” (White House 2025). Meanwhile his political appointees and aggressive treatment of disfavored media point to a concerted assault on the free press (Rutenberg Reference Rutenberg2025).

Even in the face of changing political conditions, the discourse coalitions of incumbents, challengers, and skeptics rest on sociologically rooted identities and ideological beliefs, making them likely to endure in some form. Yet the size of the coalitions may fluctuate as new actors become available and others cease their activities. Challengers may become emboldened and therefore more vocal and vehement in their discourse, whereas incumbents may be deterred from speaking in support of an unpopular or unsanctioned idea. Tactics may change, as state and financial actors rely more on coercive means to advance their policy and political objectives rather than seek to shape opinions through rhetoric. Finally, the capture of US state institutions by political forces aligned with the challengers portends a future in which the production of authoritative “knowledge” is based on ideological and nonscientific criteria (Sun and Weber Reference Sun and Weber2025). Though deprived of resources and political power, incumbents, faced with the Trump administration’s use of what they view as propaganda, will be motivated to continue calling out misinformation to thwart its efforts to undermine democracy, with the goal of eventually reclaiming their authority. The balance of power has changed, but the discursive struggle continues.