The Everyday Misinformation Project has published a new peer-reviewed paper on findings from our qualitative fieldwork with personal messaging users. In Online misinformation and everyday ontological narratives of social distinction, published in Media, Culture & Society, Natalie-Anne Hall, Andrew Chadwick, and Cristian Vaccari reveal how some people discursively position their “taste” in information consumption as superior to that of others constructed as lower in a social hierarchy. In doing so, these people distance themselves from the problem of misinformation, which is constructed as “other people’s problem”. In the paper, we discuss how this may have significant implications for vigilance towards misinformation and receptiveness to interventions by policymakers, fact-checkers, news organisations, and educators.
The paper is available online, open access here.
The Everyday Misinformation Project 