DISINFORMATION has been part and parcel of the political process since, well, forever. It was only in the Nineteenth Century, however, that the need to create narratives advantageous to one’s own cause, and disadvantageous to one’s opponents, gained access to technologies enabling disinformation to be communicated at great speed and on a massive scale. With the dawning of the Twentieth Century, however, even more startling technological innovations upped the effectiveness of disinformation by several orders of magnitude. The old adage: “A lie will be halfway around the world before Truth has pulled his boots on”; became a straightforward description of reality. By the Twenty-First Century, however, technology had advanced to the point where the separation of truth from falsehood required the adjudication of experts – and the ability to distinguish fake expertise from the real thing.
Disinformation from the Left
Disinformation from the Left
Disinformation from the Left
DISINFORMATION has been part and parcel of the political process since, well, forever. It was only in the Nineteenth Century, however, that the need to create narratives advantageous to one’s own cause, and disadvantageous to one’s opponents, gained access to technologies enabling disinformation to be communicated at great speed and on a massive scale. With the dawning of the Twentieth Century, however, even more startling technological innovations upped the effectiveness of disinformation by several orders of magnitude. The old adage: “A lie will be halfway around the world before Truth has pulled his boots on”; became a straightforward description of reality. By the Twenty-First Century, however, technology had advanced to the point where the separation of truth from falsehood required the adjudication of experts – and the ability to distinguish fake expertise from the real thing.