> Not that the authors were necessarily doing this, but I think that simply attempting to associate misinformation vulnerability with mental illness really misses the whole point.
Exactly. Besides, it is unethical, unscientific, and dangerous; i.e., you'll end up labeling large masses of people as insane because disinformation and misinformation are merely new terms for propaganda, which is public relations, which is marketing and advertising, and so on and so forth. Maybe they, the authors, the arbiters of truth, would allow me to test their sanity by asking them questions about my field? Or maybe they'd like to also classify people's sanity based on things like who buys some unneeded garbage prompted by online advertisements? Or based on who votes whom?
> I think it also reinforces the basic fake news premise that experts are propagandists.
Sure: plenty of intellectuals, including great writers and scientists, indeed have been propagandists. People like Merton even worked in war propaganda. There are plenty of experts in marketing too. And then there are people like Dugin, Zakharova, etc.
But please do not take this comment as a statement that all experts or intellectuals would always be propagandists. What I am trying to say is that we should really try to move away from these simple categories (true vs. false, disinformation vs. information, etc.) in order to understand the current information chaos. The dichotomous categories also promote the false hope that technical (AI/ML) solutions could be used to tackle the issue.
Exactly. Besides, it is unethical, unscientific, and dangerous; i.e., you'll end up labeling large masses of people as insane because disinformation and misinformation are merely new terms for propaganda, which is public relations, which is marketing and advertising, and so on and so forth. Maybe they, the authors, the arbiters of truth, would allow me to test their sanity by asking them questions about my field? Or maybe they'd like to also classify people's sanity based on things like who buys some unneeded garbage prompted by online advertisements? Or based on who votes whom?