We use “misinformation” as an umbrella term for politically driven false, inaccurate, or manipulated content circulating transnationally and digitally. The workshop’s scope spans the intersections of disinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories, with particular emphasis on the methodological challenges common to the study of all. Bringing together a diverse group of researchers from Amsterdam and beyond we center our discussion around three major topics.

Session 1: Participatory Dynamics
This session examines the human and non-human agents driving misinformation today. What tactics and strategies do propagandists, common internet users, participatory platforms, and algorithms employ (deliberately or not) in fostering and spreading such content? We will exchange research methodologies to capture misinformation’s increasingly complex and “participatory” dynamic. 

Session 2: Transnational Networks
In this session, we address the transnational and globalizing dimensions of misinformation in the 21st century. We explore how the circulation of misleading content creates – and relies on – new networks and affinities between disparate groups and distinct ideologies, across national contexts. A key focus will be on overcoming “methodological nationalism” in our fields, and on developing new approaches for studying regional and global structures and alliances of misinformation.

Session 3: Culture Wars

In this third and final session, we recognize that there is more at stake in misinformation than factual inaccuracies. Emotional manipulation, political agenda-setting, and ideological framing are as integral to its mechanisms as the outright falsification of facts. Related to this dynamic is misinformation’s entwinement with globalized, politically exploited conflicts over worldviews, religion, cultural values, and identity. Addressing misinformation’s role in such 21^st-century “culture wars” requires us to rethink our conceptual frameworks and research practices. This session explores new means to gain insight in misinformation’s cultural, ideological, and affective dimensions.  

This is an invitation-only event.