蜜桃传媒

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The internet might seem like a convenient culprit driving recent attention and concerns about misinformation, but pointing fingers exclusively at the digital age is narrow and limiting.

Misinformation has been around almost as long as people have been communicating with one another, and its effects have been significant throughout history, according to Yotam Ophir, PhD, an associate professor of communication in the 蜜桃传媒 College of Arts and Sciences, and the author of , a new book that comprehensively unravels the complexities of misinformation.

The Kindle edition is currently available. Other digital editions can be purchased at wiley.com. Print editions of the book are expected on June 9.

Despite its long-standing existence, misinformation is a fluid problem of varying shape.  It has seen many alterations, subject to the inevitable changes in the social, cultural, technological and political forces that exert new pressures and push new challenges to the surface. But two shifts in particular support Ophir’s motivation for his timely reexamination of misinformation as it exists today as a pressing issue.

The first is the political environment that arrived with Donald Trump’s first term as president, though Ophir argues that these political shifts should also be understood in light of what came before the 2016 election. Ophir points to the ways concepts such as Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness” and Ralph Keyes’ “post-truth” attracted public and scholarly attention decades before the Trump era, and contextualizes the current political moment in key changes that took place during the 20th and 21st centuries.

The second shift involved emerging technologies, including the arrival of the internet, the proliferation of social media platforms, and more recently, the meteoric rise of AI, all of which have changed how information is produced, processed and shared. Here, too, Ophir argues that the role of current technologies in misinformation should be examined in the context of media history.

“By the time the post-truth concept made a comeback in 2016, the misinformation landscape had looked very different, and the media ecosystem had been revitalized by new technologies that made it easier than ever to spread falsehoods,” says Ophir, an expert in misinformation, persuasion and media effects.

After considering the role of media and technology, Ophir turns to a study of the psychology of misinformation. He says what makes us susceptible to misinformation, such as conspiracy theories and other baseless ideas, is that humans are not truth seekers. 

“We imagine ourselves as a rational species that can process large amounts of information and make educated decisions, but when you move out to a bird’s eye view of human evolution you realize that we did not develop to identify the truth. We evolved to identify immediate risks, not distanced ones,” says Ophir.

“Our ancestors evolved in a way that made us pretty good at learning what is and is not safe for us to eat, or how to identify a tiger in a bush, but when thinking about something like climate change, though it’s a massive risk for humanity in the long run, the immediate risks today feel small and lack urgency,” he adds. “This, along with many other cognitive biases, make us susceptible to misinformation as well.”

After considering the psychological and cognitive mechanisms behind acceptance of misinformation, Ophir’s book offers ways to fight back. The book considers the different actors that may address the problem and provide empirical evidence for the plausibility of specific solutions.

“Before we can begin combating misinformation, we need to make some critical moral and social decisions about who should be responsible for the problem to begin with,” he says. “Is it government, journalists, tech leaders? There are a lot of actors that can fight misinformation, but groups within and between countries disagree on who exactly should carry the burden. Only after addressing this question can we move to the next challenge of how to counter misinformation.”

It's a big problem, one requiring a complex and nuanced approach, especially in the polarized political environment of the U.S.

“Misinformation is asymmetrical. Republican leaders and conservative media spread misinformation at higher rates than Democrats, but it’s not just Donald Trump; it’s not just FOX News; and it’s not just social media,” says Ophir. “Assigning isolated blame creates the false impression that if we elect leaders more committed to the truth or we fix Facebook, then everything will be fine. This book shows from a historical, psychological, practical and social perspective, that’s just not the case.”

It's a complicated puzzle with constantly moving parts, according to Ophir.

“We must first acknowledge misinformation’s complexity; keep studying the problem and move towards working together as a global community to solve such global challenges.

“We can’t keep putting out individual fires,” he says. “That’s just not enough.”