Addressing Disinformation Requires a Holistic and Collaborative Approach

Hannah Waltz, a consultant for PEN America’s Disinformation and Community Engagement program, is the author of the recent PEN America report Building Resilience: Identifying Community Solutions to Targeted Disinformation. The threat posed by disinformation does not exist in a vacuum. It is squarely situated in a perfect storm of crises: the prioritization of clickable content online over truth, the financial crisis facing local news, and the hands-off approach employed by social media companies toward mis- and disinformation.  Among the many examples of this dynamic, local news giants like McClatchy and Gannett laid off record numbers of journalists in 2022, and Meta recently cut staff on teams meant to address election disinformation. Compounding these challenges, this month a federal judge barred government agencies from communicating with social media platforms about a significant set of content categories. That decision has been paused by an appeals court, but it is clear that communities beset by disinformation are on their own. The communities most targeted by disinformation are often the same ones dealing with a host of other difficulties. Election disinformation disproportionately harms the least supported and represented groups: communities of color, low-wealth, rural, LGBTQ+, and diaspora communities, among others. It targets and exploits historical cultural traumas, misrepresents and demonizes certain identities, inhibits the exercise of free expression, and can foster disenfranchisement. Untouched, these disinformation narratives—routinely entangled with broader anti-democratic and xenophobic narratives and racist rhetoric—ultimately jeopardize the country’s advancement toward a multicultural and multiracial democracy. But all is not lost. PEN America’s recent…Addressing Disinformation Requires a Holistic and Collaborative Approach