The Politics of Misinformation

The Politics of Misinformation is an examination of how concentrations of social and economic power result in public languages of politics that are necessarily image-based, vague, and misleading in their denial of undemocratic tendencies. As a result, public discourses of democracy tend to be populistic, emotional, and likely to emphasize images of progress rather than structural inequalities in their formulations of public problems. Similarly, discourses of policy solutions to public problems emphasize assumptions about rationality in policy processes that are equally poor descriptions of most political outcomes. In short, neither typical problem definitions nor solutions invite critical popular understanding or involvement in democratic politics.

• A pessimistic, disturbing, and even frightening view of the events and people we encounter in everyday life • An account of the misunderstanding and error in popular discourse • A critical and skeptical expose of power in political communications

1. Images; 2. Social change; 3. Authority; 4. Public opinion; 5. Institutions; 6. Language; 7. Science; 8. Crime as an example.