Towards a Typology of Disinformation Spreaders

The next speaker in this ECREA 2022 session is another one of my temporary University of Zürich colleagues, Anna Staender. Her study sought to develop a typology of the spreaders of misinformation across multiple countries. These may include state actors, politicians and celebrities, or alternative media outlets, for instance, but not enough is known yet about their impact; the specific focus here is therefore on alternative or hyperpartisan media actors.

Previous research has seen such alternative media as a corrective to mainstream media, but such alternative media outlets may now also simply attack opposing political views at the expense of facts. What role they play may depend on the nature of the mainstream media to which they seek to present an alternative. The present study thus sought to examine the style and content characteristics of such outlets, and did so across France, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and the US for the five most popular Facebook pages of alternative media organisations.

It examined three dimensions of disinformation content: fabricated falsehoods, false connections, ideological bias, as well as noting disinformation styles, clickbait styles, and a handful of other characteristics.

This analysis identified four clusters of outlets with similar approaches. The first spreads fabricated falsehoods and false connections, and were labelled as “extreme disinformers”; they also use disinformation and clickbait styles, and fuel distrust of the political and media establishment. They existed only in Switzerland. The second is characterised mainly by ideological bias, and was labelled as “regular spreaders of disinformation”; they clearly targeted their political opponents. A third cluster was also characterised by ideological bias, and somewhat less so by the other dimensions, and was labelled “ideological misleaders”, and focussed especially also on migration, security, and culture war issues. They were more popular in the US. A final cluster contained only limited amounts of the three key dimensions, and were labelled as “rare spreaders of disinformation”; they were perhaps more professional and covered a broader range of issues, but occasionally push outright disinformation content. RT and Sputnik were in this category. These were most popular in France.

What remains to be discussed is which of these types of disinformation actors is more problematic. Also, as most of these media used highly sensationalist coverage, there is an opportunity here for mainstream media to clearly distinguish themselves from such outlets by eschewing such coverage altogether. And of course this study should be extended to a broader range of countries still.