Disinformation and strategic frames: Introducing the concept of a strategic epistemology towards media

Abstract

Efforts to raise awareness about foreign disinformation might accidentally increase distrust towards legitimate media. We argue that state discourse on disinformation is comparable to strategic framing in journalists’ coverage of political events, and that it might imbue audiences with cynicism. Furthermore, in contrast to an experimental paradigm that depicts disinformation audiences as passive, we suggest that news consumers actively appropriate and produce content themselves. Conceptualising media content as ‘strategic’ rather than sincere might influence audiences to share and produce media content strategically. This Machiavellian tendency leads to similar effects on bias as motivated reasoning. Most accounts of motivated reasoning assume that limits of psychological processing are the reasons for biased judgements of what is true and fake, however, we argue that biases can also be due to culturally acquired second-order beliefs about knowledge. To explain this, we build on ideas about ‘folk epistemology’ and propose the term ‘strategic epistemology towards media’. Resistance-building efforts against disinformation risk promoting such a strategic epistemology towards media and this can have harmful effects on democratic dialogue. To avoid this, educational interventions should be premised on social epistemology rather than experimental psychology.

Keywords

Credibility folk epistemology framing inoculation media literacy training misinformation motivated reasoning post-truth sincerity skepticism

In 2023, on either side of the Israel-Gaza perimeter, two 4-year-old boys were killed. Omer – an Israeli boy killed by Hamas – was accused by Hamas supporters of being a paid actor, and Omar – a Palestinian boy killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) – was accused by pro-Israel supporters of being a doll (Spring, 2023). In this tragic case, both sides construe authentic deaths as mere rhetorical devices used for the sake of strategic political effect.

This example illustrates a secondary consequence of disinformation, namely that people become excessively vigilant and possibly misconstrue true information as false. Communication researchers have emphasised the dual role of fake news and disinformation — such labels can also be used to discredit opponents (Egelhofer and Lecheler, 2019). To elaborate on this aspect of disinformation, we propose the concept of a strategic epistemology towards media. A strategic epistemology towards media means to interpret media information as produced by self-interested actors – whether journalists, politicians or individuals posting on social media – to achieve strategic social goals. Additionally, this interpretive lens makes people inclined to present strategic counterarguments.

In this Crosscurrents contribution, we use the term epistemology to denote norms about knowledge that are learned, culturally embedded and linked to group membership. We elaborate on how a strategic epistemology can be problematic in relation to disinformation and suggest that countermeasures towards information should be rooted in a socially situated approach. If not, attempts to counter disinformation can unintentionally increase distrust towards legitimate media (Bachmann and Valenzuela, 2023; Clayton et al., 2020; Van der Meer et al., 2023). Media literacy training can stimulate a strategic way of thinking about media content that may prompt the rejection of identity-conflicting information and an exacerbation of societal polarisation (see also Van der Linden et al., 2020). In a worst-case scenario media literacy training might thus serve the key goals of disinformation actors.

Strategy and disinformation

A tendency to discern strategic aims behind actions and expressions has been widely discussed in media studies (Aalberg et al., 2012; Zoizner, 2021). Journalists tend to cover politics with a strategic game frame. They depict politics as a sports game in which the politicians are players attempting to score political points. Rather than focussing on the political substance of statements, focus is put on the strategy behind statements. Several experiments suggest that this strategic frame of interpretation induces readers with cynicism towards politics (Zoizner, 2021). This might align with the goals of known disinformation actors, such as current Russian state media.

Fostering an attitude of cynicism is at the heart of Russian state media tactics. In the book, ‘Nothing is True, and Everything is Possible’ Pomerantsev (2014) describes that the point of staged political debates on Russian state TV is not for people to believe in them as real, but to demonstrate how easily democracy can be faked. In this way, Russian state media instills the audience with the cynical belief that political discourse is never sincere but is merely calculated for political effect.

This example suggests that cynicism might be a risk factor for becoming influenced by disinformation. However, in research on misinformation susceptibility, naivety – not cynicism – is often assumed to be the problem.¹ Accordingly, several democratic states launch media literacy campaigns intending to make members of civil society more critical. Some states even define the cultivation of psychological resistance to belief in disinformation as a vital security concern (Hassain, 2022). Yet, a growing body of studies demonstrates that training designed to counter belief in disinformation can stimulate cynicism and reduce trust in legitimate and reliable media (Bachmann and Valenzuela, 2023; Clayton et al., 2020; Hameleers, 2023; Ternovski et al., 2022; Van Duyn and Collier, 2019; Van der Meer et al., 2023). In line with this, we suggest that disinformation interventions can also stimulate peoples’ tendency to apply a strategic frame towards media.

Such a strategic frame can be applied by individuals and state actors alike. In the conflict in Gaza, both sides are likely to perceive information as part of hybrid warfare. In such warfare, if Israeli officials are accused by Hamas of having killed a civilian boy, the officials are likely to presume that this is strategic disinformation. Hybrid warfare is in itself a type of strategic game frame. The interpretive frame of hybrid warfare makes it morally imperative for the two warring sides to dismiss each other’s statements as tactical lies or exaggerations. Because of this, it is to some extent ambiguous whether pro-Israel supporters’ claim that Omar was a murdered doll is an attempt at disinformation itself or a misguided, but genuine, attempt at resisting to believe a piece of news that they suspect is disinformation.

To elaborate on this paradox, between resistance against disinformation and disinformation itself, we propose the concept of a strategic epistemology towards the media.

A strategic epistemology towards the media

A strategic epistemology towards media means that:

(1) media users expect other media actors (news outlets as well as individuals posting on social media) to be motivated by persuasive goals rather than by a goal of ‘telling the truth’, and

(2) media users approach media content not primarily to gain new knowledge, but to appropriate it themselves for their own persuasive purposes.

Our concept thus aims to encapsulate a mutual relation between strategic interpretations and strategic actions.²

A critical perspective in which the media consumer attempts to discern and discount the strategic aims behind media content can be effective at reducing gullibility. However, we argue that adopting a strategic epistemology towards media also has negative costs in terms of decreased trust and inflexibility of beliefs. If people are predisposed to resist new information, it can protect them from becoming misinformed at the expense of becoming uninformed. Although it is questionable whether a strategic epistemology is normatively desirable, our purpose is to highlight negative aspects that have been overlooked in previous research.

In the next sections, we examine the mechanisms behind and problems with a strategic epistemology towards media and link this to the disinformation debate. Based on this analysis, we then suggest that interventions against disinformation rooted in social epistemology, are preferable to those rooted in experimental psychology since they are less likely to stimulate peoples’ tendencies to apply a strategic epistemology towards media. This is the case because media users are situated in social contexts and follow group ideologies. When individuals choose to interpret and act upon information from the point of departure of their social situational context and group ideology, it may be futile and even counterproductive to debunk falsities. This can boost tendencies to think and act strategically. Instead, we will propose a shift in focus to efforts aimed at nurturing trust in others’ sincerity. This can be done by providing opportunities for people to analyse and discuss disinformation in groups, including accepting people with different situational knowledge and ideologies.

Why ‘epistemology?’

‘Strategic epistemology’ is a folk epistemological term, reflecting lay theories about knowledge. A strategic frame of analysis is ‘epistemological’ in that it comes with consequential judgments about not only what type of information can be trusted, but also about what epistemological norms one is obliged to follow when transmitting knowledge. We thus use the term ‘epistemology’ in an anthropological sense to denote norms about knowledge within a particular social context. This means that epistemologies are linked to group membership. From classic studies of Azande Witches (Evans-Pritchard, 1937) and laboratory scientists (Latour and Woolgar, 1979) to contemporary studies of Italian Pagans that embrace Covid-19 conspiracy theories (Parmigiani, 2021), the anthropological discipline has long highlighted how epistemological norms are culturally bounded. Experimental studies like Wang et al. (2022) support the anthropological conception of epistemology as contingent on group membership.

Epistemology is likely an important factor affecting peoples’ susceptibility to disinformation. In a work related to ours, Schwarzenegger (2020) uses the term ‘personal epistemologies of the media’ to capture how news consumers use verification strategies to discern true and fake news. Two survey studies by Aspernäs et al. (2023), highlight the importance of epistemological norms for misinformation susceptibility. For instance, they find a strong correlation between misinformation susceptibility and epistemological subjectivism (the belief that truth is relative to subjective intuitions).

Related to this, our concept of a ‘strategic epistemology towards media’ can be positioned within a wider debate on ‘post-truth’: the idea that we have entered a specific cultural moment of disregard for the truth, a moment in which subjective opinions matter more than objective truth. Some have depicted this as a crisis of trickle-down post-modernism inclusive of an apathetic relativism towards the truth.

Scholars have critiqued the idea of post-truth itself and the idea that people hold relativist ideas towards the truth. Hannon (2023) argues that people are in general naive realists: believing that they see the world objectively and without bias. Because of this, they cannot fathom that anyone would hold a different viewpoint from their own, and this leads them to conclude that different-minded people must be ‘uninformed, irrational, biased or immoral (Hannon, 2023: 48). Likewise, in Fischer’s (2019) study of climate science sceptics, he emphasises that they believe in objective truth. It is just that they think that climate scientists are too biased to access this objective truth, so instead, the sceptics advocate for doing their own research, believing this research will better uphold objective scientific ideals.

Hence, people who apply a strategic epistemology of the media do not necessarily reject the possibility of objective truth. On the contrary, they can apply epistemological practices of committed objectivists engaged in fighting what they perceive as ubiquitous subjectivism. Thus, we neither side with the idea that there is a prevailing culture of epistemological relativism or that there is a prevailing culture of naive realism. Rather, we want to emphasise that people sometimes employ practical epistemologies towards media, depending on varying social contexts and situational priorities.

Psychological research has emphasised how motivated reasoning affects misinformation susceptibility (e.g. Bryanov et al., 2021) but the possibility that this might be confounded with the effects of epistemological norms has been overlooked. In the next section, we problematise the general framework of psychological experiments on misinformation susceptibility and instead highlight the importance of varying situational priorities tied to social contexts. Since psychological research on misinformation fails to take this social context into account their findings have limited applicability for designing countermeasures to disinformation.

Placing psychology experiments into context

In this section, we first review popular prevention methods based on psychological research. Then we reflect on how this line of research is done in artificial settings that fail to take into account the complex social contexts in which people consume information. After this, we extend our argument with reference to media studies that highlight the social complexities of people’s engagement with social media. Finally, this takes us to our main argument. What might look like motivational reasoning from a psychologist’s perspective, can instead reflect a political engagement with media that is guided by a strategic epistemology.

Research shows that two conditions aid people to resist persuasion: (1) they recognise that they are vulnerable to being persuaded, (2) they recognise that someone is attempting to persuade them (Sagarin et al., 2002). Inoculation methods attempt to fulfill these conditions by following the logic of vaccines: build immunity to malign persuasion by exposing people to small doses of disinformation in controlled conditions. One popular inoculation method is the online game Bad News (www.getbadnews.com), developed by the Cambridge Social Decision-making lab (Roozenbeek and van der Linden, 2019). In the game, the goal is to gain as many Twitter followers as possible by spreading disinformation. The participant was taught that disinformation actors use manipulative techniques such as appealing to emotion and taking advantage of polarising subjects.

The Bad News game is a clear example of how inoculation is performed by promoting a strategic frame of interpretation: the user learns common manipulation tactics and is shown an example of how an insincere actor disseminates information for strategic gain. However, as previously stated, a potential problem is if inoculation methods work too well, and people become resistant to all forms of information. The effectiveness of inoculation methods is often measured by truth evaluation exercises. In the case of the Bad News Game, players give a 1-7 plausibility rating of a series of false and true tweets before and after playing the game. The goal is thus to improve truth discernment and not just increase general disbelief. The Bad News game has been widely studied and shown to achieve this (Basol et al., 2020). However, new research has cast doubt on these findings. Two new studies failed to replicate Basol et al. (2020)’s findings (Graham et al., 2023; Modirrousta-Galian et al., 2023) and a reanalysis of original studies of the effects of the Bad News Game finds that they do increase overall scepticism rather than the ability to discern the truth (Modirrousta-Galian and Higham, 2023).³

Another problem with truth evaluation exercises is that they do not necessarily reflect the real world (Bryanov et al., 2021), or even any real humans (see Munn, 2024). For instance, people are usually not able to verify the information through other media sources or discuss the matter with friends. Moreover, in real-life scenarios, people do not necessarily play a game of false or true while reading the news. Accordingly, in a reanalysis of several experiments by their research group, Pennycook and Rand (2022) conclude that they might have encouraged people to pay more attention to accuracy than they normally do. In another article by the same research group, they suggest that social media environments interfere with truth discernment (Epstein et al., 2023).

However, social media environments are often assumed to be the natural setting in which people encounter misinformation (Altay et al., 2023). These new media environments have been theorised to change audiences’ relation to media by blurring the distinction between media consumers and media producers. The notion that audiences are passive recipients of information has been disposed of to the extent that some scholars have proposed terms like ‘prosumers’ to overcome the distinction between producer and consumer (Robertson, 2015: 77–79). Similarly, Chadwick (2017: 217–239) shows how members of an activist group called 38 Degrees continually negotiate between an activist identity and an identity as a media producer. This is crucial and links back to our insistence that the interpretation of others’ actions affects how you act yourself. Outside of laboratories and surveys people might deal with the media in the hybrid role (Chadwick, 2017) of part reader, part journalist, part activist.

People thus receive information in tandem with transmitting information and this process is affected by situational goals. To take a concrete example, one of the authors of this article follows a woman on Instagram who is sympathetic to Palestine. While she is neither a media professional nor part of an activist network, she regularly reposts media content concerning civilian casualties in Gaza. Recently she reposted an infographic from an activist Palestine account. The infographic explains that you should repost Palestinian content because it increases the algorithmic ranking of said content. The sentiment here is that individual media activities should actively be enlisted and have the power to influence agenda-setting on social media. This short vignette of strategic media usage directed towards appropriating algorithmic structures for activist purposes clearly features a hybrid identity of audience-activist-journalist.

The likelihood of taking on a hybrid media role and a strategic epistemology towards media can be expected to be higher when dealing with political matters. The styles of left-wing and right-wing news have more in common with each other than they have with the mainstream (Potthast et al., 2018). Being in opposition to a hegemonic centre requires an activist approach to counteract perceived media bias and since politics are mediated, active politics often require people to take on the role of journalists (Chadwick, 2017). In contrast, if your political opinions are closer to the political centre, it is more likely that the current media environment represents your viewpoint, reducing the perceived necessity for an activist approach to the media. This can form an alternative explanation as to why people on both sides of the political extremes more readily fail to distinguish between true and false information (Nikolov et al., 2021); such partisan media users might be more likely to prioritise normative goals over accuracy.

The practical effects of applying a strategic epistemology towards media are likely to resemble the effects of motivated reasoning, which is that information that suits people’s identity-affirming motivations is deemed to be more plausible, whereas identity-conflicting information is disregarded as fake (Kunda, 1990). Yet, our concept ‘strategic epistemology’ differs from motivated reasoning and adds new insights, since motivated reasoning is often assumed to be an unconscious process springing from inherent limits in psychological processing (Kunda, 1990: 482–483). A strategic epistemology, on the other hand, is learned and culturally embedded. Guided by such a strategic approach to information, identity-conflicting information is consciously discarded. Returning to the case of IDF and Hamas described above. If IDF holds the second-order belief that all communication from Hamas is information warfare, their primary question is ‘how do we defuse this bomb?’, not ‘is what Hamas says about the boy likely to be true?’. The consequence of this is a biased interpretation of reality, but — and this is a major point — the cause is not necessarily a psychological bias.

The role of social identity

As we have previously stated, a strategic epistemology is tied to social identities. Hall et al. (2024) suggest that people use misinformation as a discursive tool to distinguish one’s social identity from groups construed as socially undesirable. Similarly, Chadwick et al. (2015: 16) note how reactionary responses to mainstream media issues ‘produces and reproduces identity and solidarity because it meets expectations of authenticity and connectedness that are embedded as cultural values among activists online’. In a study of alternative media consumers Schwarzenegger (2022: 863) identifies a subgroup that he labels ‘infowarriors’ which are part of participatory communities that attempt to correct what they perceive as a mainstream media bias.

Another example can be taken from one of the author’s fieldwork study of Bitcoin proponents in El Salvador (Angwald, 2023). This group was exceptionally prone to believing in conspiracy theories and misinformation about a range of subjects, such as the economy, Covid-19, climate change and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Their engagement with misinformation could not be attributed to individual cognitive factors but rather to second-order beliefs and epistemological norms that were group-contingent. The ‘Bitcoiners’ explicitly conceptualised themselves as being at war with a corrupt mainstream and held congruent beliefs on what types of sources were trustworthy. The group held its own unique epistemological norms, which can be exemplified by the Bitcoin motto ‘Don’t trust, verify’. In context, this meant an appeal to do your own research. They also cherished contrarianism and anti-elitism as a cultural ideal.

In other qualitative studies general attitudes of anti-elitism are cited as reasons for consuming dubious information (Noppari et al., 2019; Wagnsson, 2022). Anti-elitism can be epistemological. If a member of a politically disenchanted group believes media is used as a political tool for an elite in power, this can constitute a folk epistemological theory of the production of media knowledge that rationalises scepticism towards mainstream media narratives. Moreover, if a powerful other is presumed to peddle incorrect facts, one might feel that it is necessary to do so oneself, to counteract the opponent’s presumed bias. This arms race in which strategy begets strategy, would constitute what we call a strategic epistemology.

Conclusion

Educating people to scrutinise information for strategic aims can be a useful way to decrease gullibility towards disinformation. However, if people navigate the media in hybrid roles of consumer, producer and activist they might already interpret media more strategically than what is desirable. Findings that seem to suggest unconsciously motivated reasoning can be interpreted differently: people consciously appropriate information as political actors. People might be quick to label identity-conflicting information as fake and strategically beneficial information as true. When guided by a strategic epistemology, they might also think that it is morally permissible to do so.

We do not mean to suggest that this is the general way in which people think or that there is a particular group of people that think like this. Again, we want to emphasize that peoples’ epistemologies towards media are situated in social contexts and shaped by varying situational priorities.⁴ In those social situations in which truth discernment is not prioritized, media literacy education might not improve truth discernment abilities. Rather, they can reinforce strategic frames of interpretation, leading to a similar problem as that which political philosopher Michael Hannon sees with the idea of ‘post-truth’:

‘[a post-truth concept] has the effect of preempting others’ contribution to public discourse by denigrating their capacity for (or interest in) truth [and to] demote the political judgments of others to the realm of mere opinion, bias, self-interest or an expression of false consciousness.’ (Hannon, 2023: 51).

A foundational trust in others’ sincerity is a prerequisite for tolerance and dialogue which in turn are cornerstones of liberal democracy. In the long run, teaching people to be prepared for disinformation might backfire and accidentally play into the hands of foreign disinformation actors’ goals to destabilise other states (Elswah and Howard, 2020). Empirical research suggests that believing other people have been duped by disinformation (Ross et al., 2022: 787–789), and an increasing awareness of foreign disinformation attacks against elections (Tomz and Weeks, 2020), both lead to lower trust in democracy. Gullibility might be bad, but trust is imperative to the functioning of democracy.

This does not mean that we should give up attempts to do anything about disinformation.⁵

Rather, we propose that education should be rooted in a social epistemological framework for which the main goal is to further constructive political dialogue (see also Farkas, 2023: 70; Kienhues et al., 2020). Such efforts can draw upon insights from collective intervention in families or classrooms against uncivil behavior on social media (Lareki et al., 2023: 348), and dialogue-training used in anti-polarisation programmes that provide minorities with non-mainstream societal opinions opportunities to both listen to other and vent their ideas (Schulten et al., 2020). In practice this means educating people to reason in groups, to cooperate to discern falsehoods from truths, and learn to listen more to people with domain-relevant knowledge. It would involve people being confronted with different worldviews and opinions and seriously attempting to understand these. It would involve challenging a framework of naive realism with a framework that accepts that different people have different situational knowledge, including oneself. This proposal might seem helplessly naïve in relation to a seeming post-truth dystopia, but naivety is itself part of the proposal.

With the concept of strategic epistemology towards media, we have attempted to highlight the complexity of people’s engagements with disinformation. We have done this to argue that building resilience through currently popular inoculation methods risks failing and in the worst case, such attempts might backfire.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Oscar Larsson, Maria Hellman, Albin Östervall and the anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on previous versions of this manuscript.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was partially supported by the Swedish Armed Forces.

ORCID iDs

Anton Angwald

Charlotte Wagnsson

Notes

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(2021) The consequences of Strategic News Coverage for Democracy: A Meta-Analysis. Communication Research 48(1): 3–25.