Information disorders: Overexposed and under informed in the post-truth era

Abstract

Information disorders (misinformation, fakes news, alternative facts, post-truth, deepfakes, etc.) are intentional productions whose strategy is focused on the fabrication of doubt and false controversies in order to achieve economic or ideological benefits. Information disorders are all interrelated and depend, in a necessary way, on post-Internet technologies which have modified the very nature of collective interpersonal communication. Information disorders have their origin and basis in different causes that have facilitated their development, scope and unprecedented current impact as: a) the war on science from the corporate sphere, b) the crisis of the post Internet national and local media, c) the development of technological platforms that have socialized the ability to publish and distribute content at low cost, d) the crisis of the experts with a consequent epistemic crisis, e) advances in psychology, that exploit the psychological bases of informative disorders through cognitive biases, and f) a significant change in the way of understanding and exercising power in the 21st century, such as the ability to establish the relations of definition of reality itself (Beck, 2017). This supposes a true will of authority on the reality and, in the practice, a will of ideological supremacy and a serious risk for the liberal democracies.