RESEARCH STARTER

Rise of misinformation (International)

The rise of misinformation on an international scale has become a significant concern, deeply intertwined with technological advancements and sociopolitical events. Historically, misinformation has existed in various forms, from ancient smear campaigns to sensationalized newspaper stories. However, the advent of the printing press, followed by the Internet and social media, has drastically increased both the speed and reach of misinformation. Today, platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter can disseminate false information widely, impacting public opinion and electoral outcomes.

The consequences of misinformation are evident in pivotal events such as the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the Brexit vote, and various elections across Europe and Africa, where misleading narratives have influenced voter behavior. Countries with controlled media environments, like China and Russia, further illustrate the use of misinformation as a propaganda tool. Despite the recognition of this issue, responses to curb misinformation remain limited, raising concerns about ongoing societal division and distrust. As digital communication continues to evolve, experts warn that misinformation is likely an enduring challenge that will require ongoing attention and innovative solutions.

Full Article

The spread of misinformation is as old as recorded history. For example, around 44 BCE, the Roman leader Octavian ran a smear campaign against the Roman politician and general Mark Antony by printing derogatory comments about him on Roman coins. However, the opportunity to spread misinformation to a larger audience did not appear until 1450 with the invention of the printing press, and it exploded in the twenty-first century with the introduction of the Internet, smartphones and other digital devices, and social media. Misinformation such as fake news has become widespread, influencing everything from people’s opinions to presidential elections.

Background

Early newspapers attempted to increase their readership by publishing sensational stories. The first large-scale hoax occurred in 1835, when the New York Sun published six stories about the discovery of life on the moon. These fictitious accounts claimed to be based on the work of astronomer Sir John Herschel, duping many readers. The articles included illustrations of humanoid bat-like creatures and bearded blue unicorns.

In 1917, during World War I, the British newspapers The Times and The Daily Mail both ran a story claiming that the shortage of fat in Germany was so severe that the Germans were boiling down their own deceased soldiers for fat, bone meal, and pig food. The sensationalized story later caused British citizens to be reluctant to believe the reports of the mass murder of Jews and others during World War II.

In fact, propaganda and misinformation were commonly used, and continue to be used, during wars and conflicts. During World War II, the Nazis created the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, headed by Joseph Goebbels, as a vehicle to spread the hatred of Jews. Jews were depicted as being subhuman and obsessed with money and dangerous enemies of the German Reich. In 1965, Indonesia’s military staged a coup, executing six high-ranking generals and eventually placing General Suharto in charge. Suharto blamed the assassinations on communists and made wildly inaccurate and false claims to disparage them. In 2010, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram was caught doctoring a photo of then-President Hosni Mubarak to place him at the front of a group of world leaders meeting for peace talks. In the original photo, he is behind several other heads of state and is not the focus of the shot.

Overview

The mediums to spread information grew over the twentieth century with the introduction of film, radio, and television. Although tabloids such as The Sun in Britain and The National Enquirer in the United States clearly served to entertain with outrageous stories, most people generally trusted what they saw on the nightly news and read in reputable newspapers into the 2000s. However, how people understand and discern truth from fiction changed dramatically during the first two decades of the century as the use of the Internet exploded and social media platforms appeared on the scene.

Of the nearly 8 billion people in the world, 5.56 billion, or 67.9 percent of the global population, were connected to the Internet by February 2025, according to Statista. Among the number of Internet users, 5.24 billion, or 63.9 percent, used social media. By 2024, Facebook had amassed nearly three billion monthly active users, with a potential advertising reach of approximately 2.28 billion users by January 2025 and had become the most influential social media platform worldwide, although some countries, including Iran, Russia, and China, had banned it. YouTube, WhatsApp, and Instagram each had two billion or more users, and TikTok had more than one billion users. Not only did the audience for misinformation expand exponentially, but also the speed at which misinformation could be spread skyrocketed.

During the ongoing Syrian civil war, both sides used social media to spread so much misinformation that citizens had little way to separate truth from lies. When Syrian President Bashar Assad was accused by human rights groups of extrajudicial executions, he called it fake news. Similarly, he suggested that news of eighty-nine civilians killed in a chemical attack was fabricated and false, despite evidence to the contrary. In 2015, a Syrian news anchor used a scene from a Russian video game to make the false claim that Russia was supporting Syria with troops on the ground.

In countries such as China, Russia, and Iran, access to social media has been controlled to varying degrees. News agencies are state-run and only produce news that the government approves of, which is often more propaganda than news. Russia became a hub of disinformation beginning in 2014 with the creation of the Internet Research Agency. Workers at “troll farms” were paid to post to social media, filling Facebook and Twitter feeds with false stories, most of which were in favor of then-US presidential candidate Donald Trump or critical of then-candidate Hillary Clinton.

Trump posted almost obsessively to Twitter, reaching millions of people. Often his tweets were incendiary or misleading. His political rallies, drawing thousands, were equally detached from the truth. Ironically, he made the term “fake news” highly popular among his supporters and used it to refer to any news that he did not like. Russia increasingly supplemented its workers with computer bots that could produce content in massive volumes. Suddenly, the United States was flooded with large volumes of misinformation. People’s trust in truth faded, with opposing sides of the political spectrum mostly accepting only what aligned with their belief systems.

Twitter eventually discovered that Trump’s tweet feed included hate speech and banned his account. For its part, Facebook had been highly criticized for amplifying the role of misinformation in the 2016 election. In addition, Cambridge Analytica illegally obtained personal data on eighty-seven million Facebook users and coordinated with Trump’s campaign manager Steve Bannon to target the accounts with memes and messages that were either pro-Trump or anti-Clinton.

The spread of misinformation has increased and is used around the world to push a particular agenda. Evidence suggests that misinformation campaigns may have influenced Britain’s vote to leave the European Union (Brexit) and the 2016 presidential election in the Philippines. In 2017, the Kenyan elections were marred by fake news, and in France and Germany, a significant percentage of news stories were reported as misleading or false prior to the general elections. In 2023, the war between Russia and Ukraine was marked by large misinformation campaigns by both sides.

Although some governments and the United Nations (UN) have begun to consider ways to stem the use of misinformation as a tool to increase social conflict or hatred, few restrictions are in place. The European Union’s Digital Services Act, enforced in 2024, introduced stricter rules requiring major online platforms to address misinformation. Most experts have argued that fake news is likely to persist.


Bibliography

“Digital Services Act: Commission Designates Very Large Online Platforms.” European Commission, 25 Apr. 2023, ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_2413. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

Granados, Nelson. “Media Trends: Why Misinformation Is Here to Stay.” Forbes, 12 Jan. 2023, www.forbes.com/sites/nelsongranados/2023/01/12/media-trends-why-misinformation-is-here-to-stay/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

Kemp, Simon. "Facebook Users, Stats, Data & Trends for 2025." DataReportal, 12 Mar. 2025, datareportal.com/essential-facebook-stats. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

Madrid, Pamela. “USC Study Reveals the Key Reason Why Fake News Spreads on Social Media.” USC News, 17 Jan. 2023, news.usc.edu/204782/usc-study-reveals-the-key-reason-why-fake-news-spreads-on-social-media/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

"Most Popular Social Networks Worldwide as of October 2025, by Number of Monthly Active Users." Statista, Oct. 2025, www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

"Number of Internet and Social Media Users Worldwide as of October 2025." Statista, Oct. 2025, www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

Pelchen, Lexie. "Internet Usage Statistics." Forbes, 1 Mar. 2024, www.forbes.com/home-improvement/internet/internet-statistics/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

Posetti, Julie, and Alice Matthews. “A Short Guide to the History of ‘Fake News’ and Disinformation.” International Center for Journalists, www.icfj.org/sites/default/files/2018-07/A%20Short%20Guide%20to%20History%20of%20Fake%20News%20and%20Disinformation_ICFJ%20Final.pdf. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

Sadiq, Muhammed T., and Saji K. Mathew. “The Disaster of Misinformation: A Review of Research in Social Media.” International Journal of Data Science and Analytics, 2022, vol. 13, pp. 271–285. doi:10.1007/s41060-022-00311-6. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

“The Rise and Rise of Fake News.” BBC News, 6 Nov. 2016, www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-37846860. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

Full Article

The spread of misinformation is as old as recorded history. For example, around 44 BCE, the Roman leader Octavian ran a smear campaign against the Roman politician and general Mark Antony by printing derogatory comments about him on Roman coins. However, the opportunity to spread misinformation to a larger audience did not appear until 1450 with the invention of the printing press, and it exploded in the twenty-first century with the introduction of the Internet, smartphones and other digital devices, and social media. Misinformation such as fake news has become widespread, influencing everything from people’s opinions to presidential elections.

Background

Early newspapers attempted to increase their readership by publishing sensational stories. The first large-scale hoax occurred in 1835, when the New York Sun published six stories about the discovery of life on the moon. These fictitious accounts claimed to be based on the work of astronomer Sir John Herschel, duping many readers. The articles included illustrations of humanoid bat-like creatures and bearded blue unicorns.

In 1917, during World War I, the British newspapers The Times and The Daily Mail both ran a story claiming that the shortage of fat in Germany was so severe that the Germans were boiling down their own deceased soldiers for fat, bone meal, and pig food. The sensationalized story later caused British citizens to be reluctant to believe the reports of the mass murder of Jews and others during World War II.

In fact, propaganda and misinformation were commonly used, and continue to be used, during wars and conflicts. During World War II, the Nazis created the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, headed by Joseph Goebbels, as a vehicle to spread the hatred of Jews. Jews were depicted as being subhuman and obsessed with money and dangerous enemies of the German Reich. In 1965, Indonesia’s military staged a coup, executing six high-ranking generals and eventually placing General Suharto in charge. Suharto blamed the assassinations on communists and made wildly inaccurate and false claims to disparage them. In 2010, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram was caught doctoring a photo of then-President Hosni Mubarak to place him at the front of a group of world leaders meeting for peace talks. In the original photo, he is behind several other heads of state and is not the focus of the shot.

Overview

The mediums to spread information grew over the twentieth century with the introduction of film, radio, and television. Although tabloids such as The Sun in Britain and The National Enquirer in the United States clearly served to entertain with outrageous stories, most people generally trusted what they saw on the nightly news and read in reputable newspapers into the 2000s. However, how people understand and discern truth from fiction changed dramatically during the first two decades of the century as the use of the Internet exploded and social media platforms appeared on the scene.

Of the nearly 8 billion people in the world, 5.56 billion, or 67.9 percent of the global population, were connected to the Internet by February 2025, according to Statista. Among the number of Internet users, 5.24 billion, or 63.9 percent, used social media. By 2024, Facebook had amassed nearly three billion monthly active users, with a potential advertising reach of approximately 2.28 billion users by January 2025 and had become the most influential social media platform worldwide, although some countries, including Iran, Russia, and China, had banned it. YouTube, WhatsApp, and Instagram each had two billion or more users, and TikTok had more than one billion users. Not only did the audience for misinformation expand exponentially, but also the speed at which misinformation could be spread skyrocketed.

During the ongoing Syrian civil war, both sides used social media to spread so much misinformation that citizens had little way to separate truth from lies. When Syrian President Bashar Assad was accused by human rights groups of extrajudicial executions, he called it fake news. Similarly, he suggested that news of eighty-nine civilians killed in a chemical attack was fabricated and false, despite evidence to the contrary. In 2015, a Syrian news anchor used a scene from a Russian video game to make the false claim that Russia was supporting Syria with troops on the ground.

In countries such as China, Russia, and Iran, access to social media has been controlled to varying degrees. News agencies are state-run and only produce news that the government approves of, which is often more propaganda than news. Russia became a hub of disinformation beginning in 2014 with the creation of the Internet Research Agency. Workers at “troll farms” were paid to post to social media, filling Facebook and Twitter feeds with false stories, most of which were in favor of then-US presidential candidate Donald Trump or critical of then-candidate Hillary Clinton.

Trump posted almost obsessively to Twitter, reaching millions of people. Often his tweets were incendiary or misleading. His political rallies, drawing thousands, were equally detached from the truth. Ironically, he made the term “fake news” highly popular among his supporters and used it to refer to any news that he did not like. Russia increasingly supplemented its workers with computer bots that could produce content in massive volumes. Suddenly, the United States was flooded with large volumes of misinformation. People’s trust in truth faded, with opposing sides of the political spectrum mostly accepting only what aligned with their belief systems.

Twitter eventually discovered that Trump’s tweet feed included hate speech and banned his account. For its part, Facebook had been highly criticized for amplifying the role of misinformation in the 2016 election. In addition, Cambridge Analytica illegally obtained personal data on eighty-seven million Facebook users and coordinated with Trump’s campaign manager Steve Bannon to target the accounts with memes and messages that were either pro-Trump or anti-Clinton.

The spread of misinformation has increased and is used around the world to push a particular agenda. Evidence suggests that misinformation campaigns may have influenced Britain’s vote to leave the European Union (Brexit) and the 2016 presidential election in the Philippines. In 2017, the Kenyan elections were marred by fake news, and in France and Germany, a significant percentage of news stories were reported as misleading or false prior to the general elections. In 2023, the war between Russia and Ukraine was marked by large misinformation campaigns by both sides.

Although some governments and the United Nations (UN) have begun to consider ways to stem the use of misinformation as a tool to increase social conflict or hatred, few restrictions are in place. The European Union’s Digital Services Act, enforced in 2024, introduced stricter rules requiring major online platforms to address misinformation. Most experts have argued that fake news is likely to persist.


Bibliography

“Digital Services Act: Commission Designates Very Large Online Platforms.” European Commission, 25 Apr. 2023, ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_2413. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

Granados, Nelson. “Media Trends: Why Misinformation Is Here to Stay.” Forbes, 12 Jan. 2023, www.forbes.com/sites/nelsongranados/2023/01/12/media-trends-why-misinformation-is-here-to-stay/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

Kemp, Simon. "Facebook Users, Stats, Data & Trends for 2025." DataReportal, 12 Mar. 2025, datareportal.com/essential-facebook-stats. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

Madrid, Pamela. “USC Study Reveals the Key Reason Why Fake News Spreads on Social Media.” USC News, 17 Jan. 2023, news.usc.edu/204782/usc-study-reveals-the-key-reason-why-fake-news-spreads-on-social-media/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

"Most Popular Social Networks Worldwide as of October 2025, by Number of Monthly Active Users." Statista, Oct. 2025, www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

"Number of Internet and Social Media Users Worldwide as of October 2025." Statista, Oct. 2025, www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

Pelchen, Lexie. "Internet Usage Statistics." Forbes, 1 Mar. 2024, www.forbes.com/home-improvement/internet/internet-statistics/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

Posetti, Julie, and Alice Matthews. “A Short Guide to the History of ‘Fake News’ and Disinformation.” International Center for Journalists, www.icfj.org/sites/default/files/2018-07/A%20Short%20Guide%20to%20History%20of%20Fake%20News%20and%20Disinformation_ICFJ%20Final.pdf. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

Sadiq, Muhammed T., and Saji K. Mathew. “The Disaster of Misinformation: A Review of Research in Social Media.” International Journal of Data Science and Analytics, 2022, vol. 13, pp. 271–285. doi:10.1007/s41060-022-00311-6. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

“The Rise and Rise of Fake News.” BBC News, 6 Nov. 2016, www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-37846860. Accessed 12 Apr. 2026.

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