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The climate lockdown conspiracies claim that a clandestine group of elites are planning to use climate change as a justification to enact widespread lockdowns and curtail freedoms. This conspiracy draws on a wide range of unconnected real-world events and suggests that their possibility of happening again is all the proof required.

Throughout human history, political leaders, oppositional forces, and businesspeople have frequently coordinated in secret for their own benefit and the public’s disadvantage. In these cases, conspiracy theories are capable of accurately describing our environment. However, the vast majority of research today operationalizes conspiracy theories as irrational beliefs that contradict our everyday knowledge.

The field of misinformation is facing several challenges, from attacks on academic freedom to polarizing discourse about the nature and extent of the problem for elections and digital well-being. However, we see this as an inflection point and an opportunity to chart a more informed and contextual research practice.

Was the 2023 Slovakia election the first swung by deepfakes? Did the victory of a pro-Russian candidate, following the release of a deepfake allegedly depicting election fraud, herald a new era of disinformation? Our analysis of the so-called “Slovak case” complicates this narrative, highlighting critical factors that made the electorate particularly susceptible to pro-Russian disinformation.

Many observers of the current explosion of generative AI worry about its impact on our information environment, with concerns being raised about the increased quantity, quality, and personalization of misinformation. We assess these arguments with evidence from communication studies, cognitive science, and political science.

The proliferation of misinformation has prompted significant research efforts, leading to the development of a wide range of interventions. There is, however, insufficient guidance on how to evaluate these interventions. Here, we argue that researchers should consider not just the interventions’ primary effectiveness but also ancillary outcomes and implementation challenges.

Who are mis-/disinformation studies for? What agenda does the field serve? How can it be improved? While the increase in the attention towards the topic in the last years is healthy, it has also led to an explosion of papers in all directions, and the field has been subject to various criticisms and attacks.

Drawing on preliminary research about the spread of mis- and disinformation across Asian diasporic communities, we advocate for qualitative research methodologies that can better examine historical, transnational, multilingual, and intergenerational information networks. Using examples of case studies from Vietnam, Taiwan, China, and India, we discuss research themes and challenges including legacies of multiple imperialisms, nationalisms, and geopolitical tensions as root causes of mis- and disinformation; difficulties in data collection due to private and closed information networks, language translation and interpretation; and transnational dimensions of information infrastructures and media platforms.

In the new information environment represented by the internet and social media platforms, information of public health importance is transmitted rapidly by decentralized, interpersonal networks rather than through traditional sources like public health officials or professional journalists, thus requiring a new approach to counteracting misinformation.

This essay advocates a critical approach to disinformation research that is grounded in history, culture, and politics, and centers questions of power and inequality. In the United States, identity, particularly race, plays a key role in the messages and strategies of disinformation producers and who disinformation and misinformation resonates with.