Disinformation and Misinformation Research: Trends in the Past and Ways for the Future

Increasing, yet intensified and charged discourses in communication research literature and beyond about the ways of tackling the menace of misinformation, and disinformation as well, amply indicate how the post truth media content, particularly digital media content, contaminated the global information ecosystem implicating for social and political communication practices and necessitated complicated verification methods and vetting mechanisms. At various points in history, with the outbreak of communal clash, pandemic or war, this menace has been taken seriously by the authorities, both governmental and non governmental, as it could cause harm to the lives of people (Vogel, 2017). Realizing the harmful power of misinformation on the web, and being helpless to fight against the spreading misinformation beyond a limit, the necessity of the time being is to find alternatives to fight the fake through more detection strategies. This work analyses the studies related to disinformation and misinformation across the globe and with special reference to India, trying to find out the recommendations for the field of communication research as what should be the future agenda on the study of misinformation and disinformation. Rather than limiting certain aspects of the cause and impact, further steps need to be taken on the literacy of detection of misinformation, public awareness and inclusion of community-based media literacy initiatives. For example devising newer credibility assessment mechanisms has become need of the hour when it comes to infiltration of misinformation and disinformation trends to serious academic communication domains (Marwick and Rebecca, 2017). Same is the case of other domains too, particularly journalism, which is fundamentally positioned as a process of verification. The article presents suggestions based on previous studies experiences as to how the verification and credibility assessment enterprises shall move forward.

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