Populism and the politics of misinformation

ABSTRACT

The proliferation of fake news and of conspiracy theories has coincided with the emergence of the digital media. Although the extensive distribution of misinformation is nothing new, the emergence of online media proved to be especially fertile for conspiratorial populists in transmitting distorted information. Since 2016, conspiracy theories, disguised as news, have spread like a snowstorm across the political scene on both sides of the Atlantic. As I discuss in this paper, this climate has enabled conspiratorial populists to be especially successful in spreading suspicion of established knowledge, which they claim to have been produced by the elite and which is eschewed for its association with the powerful. Alongside the diminished gatekeeping capabilities of the mainstream media, it thus becomes ever more difficult for people to distinguish between factual stories and fictitious news often spread via unscrupulous websites, as both can be presented in the same guise.