"The Biology of Disinformation," a paper by Rushkoff, Pescovitz, and Dunagan

My Institute for the Future colleagues Douglas Rushkoff, Jake Dunagan, and I wrote a research paper on the "Biology of Disinformation" and how media viruses, bots and computational propaganda have redefined how information is weaponized for propaganda campaigns. While technological solutions may seem like the most practical and effective remedy, fortifying social relationships that define human communication may be the best way to combat "ideological warfare" that is designed to push us toward isolation. As Rushkoff says, "adding more AI's and algorithms to protect users from bad social media is counterproductive: how about increasing our cultural immune response to destructively virulent memes, instead?" From The Biology of Disinformation:

The specter of widespread computational propagandathat leverages memetics through persuasivetechnologies looms large. Already, artificially intelligentsoftware can evolve false political and social constructshighly targeted to sway specific audiences. Users findthemselves in highly individualized, algorithmicallydetermined news and information feeds, intentionallydesigned to: isolate them from conflicting evidenceor opinions, create self-reinforcing feedback loopsof confirmation, and untether them from fact-basedreality. And these are just early days. If memes anddisinformation have been weaponized on social media, itis still in the musket stage. Sam Woolley, director of theInstitute for the Future's (IFTF) Digital Intelligence Lab,has concluded that defenders of anything approaching"objective" truth are woefully behind in dealing withcomputational propaganda. This is the case in bothtechnological responses and neuro-cultural defenses.Moreover, the 2018 and 2020 US election cyclesare going to see this kind of cognitive warfare on anunprecedented scale and reach.

But these mechanisms, however powerful, are only asmuch a threat to human reason as the memetic materialthey transmit, and the impact of weaponized memeticsitself on the social and political landscape. Memes serveas both probes of collective cultural conflicts, and waysof inflaming social divisions. Virulent ideas and imageryonly take hold if they effectively trigger a culturalimmune response, leading to widespread contagion.This is less a question of technological delivery systemsand more a question of human vulnerability. The urgentquestion we all face is not how to disengage from themodern social media landscape, but rather how do weimmunize ourselves against media viruses, fake news,and propaganda?

"The Biology OfDisinformation: Memes, Media Viruses, And Cultural Inoculation" (IFTF.org)