Structuring different manifestations of misinformation for better policy development using a decision tree-based approach

The spread of false and misleading information in digital communication spaces has enormous potential for harm in democratic societies, but has so far been insufficiently addressed by policy makers. This problem has been exacerbated by recent technological developments such as deepfakes. But deepfakes, fake news, and disinformation are only manifestations of misinformation. It is therefore essential to establish a clear definition to develop an appropriate policy. Since misinformation is a hydra whose countless heads cannot be cut off by a single heroine, we conclude that an interdisciplinary approach is necessary to appropriately “regulate” the different dimensions of misinformation. Therefore, we develop a decision tree that allows us to structure the problem of misinformation. Since deepfakes are particularly well suited to characterize the various manifestations of misinformation, we use them as an application example to illustrate our decision-tree-based approach. Based on this systematization, it will be possible to identify the capabilities and limitations of strategies from different disciplines and to develop a bundle of measures to address the various manifestations of misinformation. The basic principles of this bundle of measures will already be outlined here.