While the historical impact of rumours and fabricated content has been well documented, efforts to better understand today’s challenge of information pollution on a global scale are only just beginning. Concern about the implications of dis-information campaigns designed specifically to sow mistrust and confusion and to sharpen existing sociocultural divisions using nationalistic, ethnic, racial and religious tensions is growing.

The Council of Europe report on “Information Disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making” is an attempt to comprehensively examine information disorder and to outline ways to address it. 

In order to effectively address information pollution, we need to understand the emotional and ritualistic elements of communication. The most ‘successful’ of problematic content is that which plays on people’s emotions and encourages feelings of superiority, anger or fear. This is also the type of content that is most liked and shared, often without actually having been read or understood. The report emphasises that the core purpose of communication between people, going far beyond the function of transmission of information, lies in representing shared beliefs.

When most social platforms are engineered for people to publicly ‘perform’ through likes, comments or shares, it’s easy to understand why emotional content travels so quickly and widely, even as we see an explosion in fact-checking and debunking organisations. 

Lengthy fact-checking and debunking of false information may come too late. It may also not reach the intended audience because it is not liked and shared. There is an urgent need to understand the most effective formats for sparking curiosity and scepticism amongst audiences about the information they consume and the sources from which that information comes. The collapse of local journalism is viewed as an important contributor to the success of disinformation, as such campaigns grow much faster amongst marginalised communities who mistrust mainstream media.

In addition to its conceptual framework, the report provides a round-up of related research, reports and practical initiatives connected to the topic of information disorder, as well as filter bubbles and echo chambers, and contains thirty-five recommendations for governments, technology companies, media organisations and civil society.