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1 results

  • 7 - The Human Infrastructure of Misinformation

  • Madelyn R. Sanfilippo, University of Illinois School of Information Sciences, Melissa G. Ocepek, University of Illinois School of Information Sciences
  • Book:
    Governing Misinformation in Everyday Knowledge Commons
    Published online:
    13 March 2025
    Print publication:
    20 March 2025, pp 148-166
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  • Summary

    Behind the black boxes of algorithms promoting or adding friction to posts, technical design decisions made to affect behavior, and institutions stood up to make decisions about content online, it can be easy to lose track of the heteromation involved, the humans spreading disinformation and, on the other side, moderating or choosing not to moderate it. This can be aptly shown in the case of the spread of misinformation on WhatsApp during Brazil’s 2018 general elections. Since WhatsApp runs on a peer-to-peer architecture, there was no algorithm curating content according to the characteristics or demographics of the users, which is how filter bubbles work on Facebook. Instead, a human infrastructure was assembled to create a pro-Bolsonaro environment on WhatsApp and spread misinformation to bolster his candidacy. In this paper, we articulate the labor executed by the human infrastructure of misinformation as hetoromation.