This chapter introduces the reader to the topic studied in the book, factual misinformation and its appeal in war. It poses the main research question of who believes in wartime misinformation and how people know what is happening in war. It then outlines the book’s central argument about the role of proximity and exposure to the fighting in constraining public misperceptions in conflict, and the methods and types of evidence used to test it. After clarifying some key concepts used in the book, it finally closes with a sketch of the manuscript’s main implications and an outline of its structure and contents.

This chapter concludes the book and considers its major theoretical and practical implications. It begins by exploring how the book pushes us to think about fake news and factual misperceptions as an important “layer” of war – a layer that has been largely neglected despite the burgeoning attention to these issues in other domains. This final chapter then examines what the book’s findings tell us about such topics as the psychology and behavior of civilian populations, the duration of armed conflicts, the feasibility of prevailing counterinsurgency models, and the depths and limits of misperceptions more broadly in social and political life. It also engages with the practical implications of the book for policymakers, journalists, activists, and ordinary politically engaged citizens in greater depth, exploring how the problems outlined in the research might also be their own solutions. Ultimately, this chapter shows how the book has something to offer to anyone who is interested in the dynamics of truth and falsehood in violent conflicts (and beyond) – and perhaps the beginnings of a framework for those who would like to cultivate more truth.

This chapter examines issues of factual misinformation and misperception in the case of the US drone campaign in Pakistan. It first shows that, while the drone campaign is empirically quite precise and targeted, it is largely seen as indiscriminate throughout Pakistani society. In other words, there is a pervasive factual misperception about the nature of the drone strikes in Pakistan. Second, the chapter shows that this misperception is consequential. Notably, it shows that Pakistani perceptions of the inflated civilian casualties associated with the strikes are among the strongest drivers of opposition to them in the country. It also provides evidence suggesting that this anti-drone backlash fuels broader political alienation and violence in Pakistan. Finally, the chapter shows that these misbeliefs about drones (and the reactions they inspire) are not shared by local civilians living within the tribal areas where the incidents occur. In sum, the chapter demonstrates that factual misperceptions about US drone strikes in Northwest Pakistan are generally widespread and consequential in the country, but not in the areas that actually experience the violence.

This chapter reviews the evidence behind the anti-misinformation interventions that have been designed and tested since misinformation research exploded in popularity around 2016. It focuses on four types of intervention: boosting skills or competences (media/digital literacy, critical thinking, and prebunking); nudging people by making changes to social media platforms’ choice architecture; debunking misinformation through fact-checking; and (automated) content labelling. These interventions have one of three goals: to improve relevant skills such as spotting manipulation techniques, source criticism, or lateral reading (in the case of boosting interventions and some content labels); to change people’s behavior, most commonly improving the quality of their sharing decisions (for nudges and most content labels); or to reduce misperceptions and misbeliefs (in the case of debunking). While many such interventions have been shown to work well in lab studies, there continues to be an evidence gap with respect to their effectiveness over time, and how well they work in real-life settings (such as on social media).

Most people who regularly use the Internet will be familiar with words like “misinformation,” “fake news,” “disinformation,” and maybe even “malinformation.” It can appear as though these terms are used interchangeably, and they often are. However, they don’t always refer to the same types of content, and just because a news story or social media post is false doesn’t always mean it’s problematic. To add to the confusion, not all misinformation researchers agree on the definition of the problem, or employ a unified terminology. This chapter discusses the terminology around misinformation, guided by illustrative examples of problematic news content. It also looks at what misinformation isn’t: what makes a piece of information “real” or “true”? Finally, we explore how researchers have defined misinformation and how these definitions can be categorized, before presenting the working definition that is used throughout this book.

This chapter discusses how governments and supernational institutions have tried to tackle misinformation through laws and regulations. Some countries have adopted new legislation making the spread or creation of misinformation illegal; this has often been met with criticism by human rights organizations, for instance, because governments cannot act as neutral arbiters of truth. The UK and EU have adopted expansive regulatory frameworks that regulate not only misinformation but rather the online information space in its entirety. The United States is generally wary of any new legislation that imposes limits on speech, and doesn’t currently have legislative initiatives that are as broad in scope as those in the UK and EU. Instead, some entities in the US have tried out investing in communications campaigns about mis- and disinformation; these are aimed at individuals (and not companies or misinformation producers), and their effectiveness is evaluated in a very different way.

Chapter 3 expands on the diabolical aspects of the contemporary political soundscape and develops initial deliberative responses to its key problematic aspects. These aspects include an overload of expression that overwhelms the reflective capacities of listeners; a lack of argumentative complexity in political life; misinformation and lies; low journalistic standards in “soft news”; cultural cognition, which means that an individual’s commitment to a group determines what gets believed and denied; algorithms that condition what people get to hear (which turn out to fall short of creating filter bubbles in which they hear only from the like-minded); incivility; and extremist media. The responses feature reenergizing the public sphere through means such as the cultivation of spaces for reflection both online and offline, online platform regulation and design, restricting online anonymity, critical journalism, media literacy education, designed forums, social movement practices, and everyday conversations in diverse personal networks. Formal institutions (such as legislatures) and political leaders also matter.

This chapter discusses the ups and downs of the authors’ program of research on misinformation, which has involved creating “fake news” games and videos to reduce susceptibility to various common types of manipulation. Despite some successes, there are also substantial nuances to their work: limited cross-cultural generalizability, in some cases an unintentional effect of game-based interventions on people’s evaluation of “real news” or non-misinformation, a negligible impact of such interventions on people’s social media sharing behavior, and perhaps most importantly the (potentially rapid) disappearance of the intervention effect over time and the presence of testing effects: actively rehearsing the lessons from the interventions (e.g, about how to spot a particular manipulation technique) appears to be important for their longevity and effectiveness. These limitations have substantial implications for anyone who wants to design (and test) an intervention to counter misinformation.

Examples of misinformation having real-world consequences aren’t hard to find, and misinformation has been a hugely important topic of discussion in popular media, among politicians, and in scientific research. This chapter discusses whether misinformation poses a problem for society: for example, by damaging the democratic process or fostering potentially problematic health behaviors. We discuss competing perspectives in detail: scientists disagree over the extent to which misinformation can be harmful at a societal level, and what definition of “misinformation” is used matters a lot in determining the scope of the problem. The chapter concludes with a case study: information warfare in the present-day Russian–Ukrainian war.

Misinformation has only recently seen a surge in research interest and public attention, but the concept itself is much older. Not only have humans manipulated and lied to each other since the dawn of language, but animals are also known to use manipulation to achieve certain goals. This chapter provides a historical overview of misinformation. It first looks at some of its possible evolutionary origins, before tracing how false information has been used as a tool of persuasion throughout history, and discussing the role of technological innovations such as the printing press and mass communications. Finally, we look at the recent advent of the internet era, and what role misinformation plays in society today.

This chapter discusses the individual-level and societal-level factors that underlie why people believe and share misinformation, including analytical and open-minded thinking, political partisanship, trust, political and affective polarization, psychological appeal, repetition, emotion, and intergroup sentiment. We look at misinformation belief and sharing separately: just because someone believes a false claim to be true doesn’t mean they’ll share it on social media, and someone sharing a piece of misinformation doesn’t always mean they also believe it.