Navigating the disinformation ecosystem: concepts, actors, methods, and challenges

This chapter explores possible epistemic and methodological resources to investigate the phenomenon of disinformation within contemporary information ecosystems where the mechanisms and networks of production and circulation of false, misleading or deceitful news have become both highly sophisticated and alarmingly widespread. Whereas the manipulation of information is not a new phenomenon – consider for instance the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, a text in which at the beginning of the first century AD, Emperor Augustus presented his achievements to posterity by omitting controversial or violent actions and carefully crafting an image of himself as a restorer of the Republic rather than an autocrat – its prominence in political discourse and in the policy field is a relatively new trend (Giusti & Piras, 2021; O’Connor & Weatherall, 2019).