At the end of 2020, it seemed hard to imagine a worse year for misinformation on social media, given the intensity of the presidential election and the trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic. But 2021 proved up to the task, starting with the Jan. 6 insurrection and continuing with copious amounts of falsehoods and distortions about COVID-19 vaccines.
To get a sense of what 2022 could hold, we asked three researchers about the evolution of misinformation on social media.
Absent regulation, misinformation will get worse
Anjana Susarla, Professor of Information Systems, Michigan State University
While misinformation has always existed in media — think of the Great Moon Hoax of 1835 that claimed life was discovered on the moon — the advent of social media has significantly increased the scope, spread and reach of misinformation. Social media platforms have morphed into public information utilities that control how most people view the world, which makes misinformation they facilitate a fundamental problem for society.
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