ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors focus on disinformation, which they define as false information created and spread with knowledge of its inaccuracies, and misinformation, false information spread without knowledge of its inaccuracies. The authors briefly review the history of scholarship on false information in social movements and then build on these insights to specify five different theoretical lenses each connected to specific producers for understanding false information in social movements. Collective behavior research from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the scholastic progenitor to social movements research, offers the earliest view of false information, viewing crowds as irrational and susceptible to rumour. The food and beverage industry has run misinformation campaigns to downplay the risks of high sugar consumption, targeting Black families, Hispanic youth, and people who are poor, and run false information campaigns about 'healthy' foods that contain deceptively high amounts of sugar to limit activism demanding change.
