Simon Lindgren (PI, DIGSUM), Elsa Hedling (Lund University), and Therese Enarsson (DIGSUM) have received funding from the Swedish Research Council for carrying out sociotechnical research on digital disinformation. The name of the project is Postdigital Propaganda.
The digital age has altered how disinformation is created, circulated, and responded to. There is still a lack, however, of systematic studies that try to characterise and understand these processes in sociotechnical terms. Our project will make a contribution in this respect. This means going beyond a perspective where digital media are seen merely as an arena for the propagation of disinformation, to one where they are construed as deeply transformative.
What we are currently witnessing is not only a scale change, but in fact a model change as regards how disinformation works. Systematically analysing how the specifically digital character of present-day disinformation impacts on how it takes shape and spreads — and doing so in an empirically grounded, and theoretically informed way — will produce knowledge that can contribute to moving scholarship in this area beyond the current state-of-the-art.
The research questions cover three different dimensions that will be addressed through a mixed-methods design:
RQ1. Content: How can the persuasion practices and techniques used in social media posts that carry disinformation be sociotechnically understood?
RQ2. Spread: How do digital disinformation messages spread within, across, and beyond social media platforms?
RQ3. Responses. How is society responding to digital disinformation? We explore this both at the level of interactions on digital platforms, and in terms of the wider context of legal and regulatory responses.