OVERVIEW
The authors suggest that there may not be a “silver bullet” for addressing misinformation at present, but that the “interventions most likely to succeed” involve “radical and unlikely” change, which may include regulatory frameworks to penalize intentional bad actors and distributors of fake news. Basic democratic institutions may need “reengineering,” they write.

But they do admit that “we get a firmer grasp” of the issue, as “(policy) decisions are being made on the basis of lies and falsehoods,” they write.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Cailin O’Connor is a Professor in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, and a member of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science at the University of California Irvine.

James Owen Weatherall is Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California Irvine, where he also is a member of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science, the Center for Cosmology, and the Jack W. Peltason Center for the Study of Democracy.

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The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread
By Cailin O'Connor and James Owen Weatherall