ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how littered our informational environment is and why it's worse now than it has been in recent years. While many of the examples will focus on the recent surges of political disinformation from political parties, foreign governments, and biased news outlets, the big picture is about so much more. And while this assault has increased with the rise of electronic media, as it turns out, our informational environment was never pristine. The short of it is that there are many sources of misinformation, and no shortage of bad actors who will manipulate the people for their own ends. The advent of electronic media has lowered both the cost of producing information (and misinformation). If it's both cheap and easy to produce stories about the truth, then the people should expect the truth to spread just as far and eventually smother the misinformation.
