[Air-L] IJOC Special Section: True Costs of Misinformation

[Jonathan Ong]

Hi, folks.

Inviting y’all to check out a newly published special section for IJOC entitled “True Costs of Misinformation”:



Guest-edited by Jonathan Corpus Ong and Joan Donovan, this Special Section on True Costs of Misinformation engages the following key questions: Who pays for the harms and damage brought by misinformation? What are the financial, social, and human costs to society? Whose definitions and measures of digital harms matter when coordinating a global response? Crucially, what is the future of disinformation studies? What concepts and debates should disinformation scholars continue to engage with, and what methodologies and advocacy strategies need to be discarded?

This Special Section gathers articles written by senior and junior scholars who attended an international and interdisciplinary workshop of the same name in March 2022. Most of these papers were written during a more hopeful and less risky "peak moment" for tech accountability and tech justice advocacy especially in the United States. These papers collectively offer powerful critiques to the foundational frameworks and methodologies in disinformation studies and the tech-first, top-down, and U.S.-centric interventions industry.

In this first paper, Alice Marwick and Katherine Furl offer extremism and radicalization researchers a framework to study "redpilling" as a process as they advocate for long-term, values-based interventions. In the second paper, Amogh Dhar Sharma presents a model of deep ethnographic investigation that move beyond examining disinformation as content to explore how politicians in India misuse state resources and funnel "black money" to reward media manipulators who help them stay in power. Three papers deal with the important yet overlooked issue of audience reception of misinformation and conspiracy theories-across diverse contexts of the Asian diaspora in the United States (Rachel Kuo, Madhavi Reddi, and Lan Li), audiences in Kenya and Senegal (Dani Madrid Morales, Melissa Tully, Kevin C. Mudavadi, Frankline Matanji, and Layire Diop), and political fans in the Philippines (Nicole Curato and Sofia Tomacruz). Finally, Samantha Bradshaw, Gabrielle Lim, and Monzima Haque critique the global diffusion of anti-fake news legislation in a global context and how a more inclusive and context-aware approach is less vulnerable to authoritarian capture than the mainstream securitization frame.

With their critical, contextual, and community-driven approaches mindful of global differences and inequalities, these papers prompt powerful reflection on what the field in its peak moment got right–and also what it got wrong in both its research and activist methodologies.

We invite you to read these articles that published in the International Journal of Communication on June 10, 2025. Please log into ijoc.org to read the papers of interest. We look forward to your feedback!

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The True Costs of Misinformation—Introduction<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/25330__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!pvldwwZeElUFpYlyA4S_F8goJJUpB9p_L8fok1vDoNSUSwZEYhcbCMO7vQN7t5iG9glGdaxywvh93_uOteJ9mDmADJfS$>
Jonathan Corpus Ong, Joan Donovan

Mountains of Evidence: Processual "Redpilling" as a Socio-Technical Effect of Disinformation<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/21934__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!pvldwwZeElUFpYlyA4S_F8goJJUpB9p_L8fok1vDoNSUSwZEYhcbCMO7vQN7t5iG9glGdaxywvh93_uOteJ9mCP1MdlV$>
Alice E. Marwick, Katherine Furl

Political Finance and Patronage Behind Disinformation: Evidence From India's Election Campaigns<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/21938__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!pvldwwZeElUFpYlyA4S_F8goJJUpB9p_L8fok1vDoNSUSwZEYhcbCMO7vQN7t5iG9glGdaxywvh93_uOteJ9mIzX3UxJ$>
Amogh Dhar Sharma

Transnational Information Networks: Methods for Cross-Diasporic Research<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/21935__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!pvldwwZeElUFpYlyA4S_F8goJJUpB9p_L8fok1vDoNSUSwZEYhcbCMO7vQN7t5iG9glGdaxywvh93_uOteJ9mChjjUCt$>
Rachel Kuo, Madhavi Reddi, Lan Li

Exploring Audience Agency in Countering Misinformation<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/21936__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!pvldwwZeElUFpYlyA4S_F8goJJUpB9p_L8fok1vDoNSUSwZEYhcbCMO7vQN7t5iG9glGdaxywvh93_uOteJ9mEezjJhA$>
Dani Madrid-Morales, Melissa Tully, Kevin C. Mudavadi,
Frankline Matanji, Layire Diop

How Conspiracy Theories Harm Deliberative Democracy<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/22799__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!pvldwwZeElUFpYlyA4S_F8goJJUpB9p_L8fok1vDoNSUSwZEYhcbCMO7vQN7t5iG9glGdaxywvh93_uOteJ9mL_-J6h3$>
Nicole Curato, Sofia Tomacruz

The Global Spread of Misinformation Laws<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/21937__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!pvldwwZeElUFpYlyA4S_F8goJJUpB9p_L8fok1vDoNSUSwZEYhcbCMO7vQN7t5iG9glGdaxywvh93_uOteJ9mCoe9D4r$>
Samantha Bradshaw, Gabrielle Lim, Monzima Haque


Dr Jonathan Corpus Ong
Professor of Global Digital Media
GloTechLab.net Founding Director
UMass Amherst

Recent research:

  1.  The Global Majority Has Its Own Counter-Disinformation Agenda: https://mediawell.ssrc.org/articles/the-global-majority-has-its-own-counter-disinformation-agenda/
  2.  Tech Bro Power Play: Zuckerberg vs Global Tech Justice: https://www.techpolicy.press/tech-bro-power-play-zuckerberg-vs-global-tech-justice/
  3.  Disinformation-for-Hire as Everyday Digital Labor: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/20563051231224723