Abstract

As legitimate and voluminous as vexations about disinformation are, intended and unintended injury to information integrity – and to individuals consuming compromised content – are not new phenomena on the socio-political landscape. The circulation of exaggeration and lies is an historical reality of human self-organization. Yet the volume, velocity, and variety of contemporary disinformation makes an infodemic diagnosis a reasonable one and the successional levels of disinformed citizenship a legitimate concern for democracy’s preservation. In light of this threat, we trace the salient trajectories and philosophical fault lines related to disinformation and offer diagnostics and present-day mitigation strategies for this hazard.