Reality filters: Disinformation and fake news

The recent past has been characterized by both a rise in fake news and the emergence of a febrile political atmosphere. Increasingly, social media and digital networking are coming under the spotlight as significant causes. The Internet has become perhaps a disinformation superhighway, the promised wisdom of crowds (Surowieki, 2004) degenerating into the clamour of the twitter mob (e.g. Ronson, 2015). Fake news and disinformation have come to dominate, and the democratizing effects of digital media have been undone by increasing concentrations of power into a handful of tech companies. In this editorial, we explore the rise of fake news and how it is transforming public discourse.