Political Disinformation: “Fake News”, Bots, and Deep Fakes

Political disinformation has become a central concern in both public discourse and scholarly inquiry, particularly following the electoral successes of right-wing populist movements in Western democracies since 2016. These events have been widely interpreted through the lens of manipulation, deviance, and disruption; all closely linked to the spread of false information, automated amplification, and foreign interference in digital communication environments. More recently, advances in Artificial Intelligence have added to anxieties about the growing sophistication and scale of disinformation campaigns. Collectively, these concerns are often framed under the concept of digital disinformation and viewed as posing existential threats to democratic systems. This entry provides a comprehensive and critical overview of the disinformation debate. It traces the definitional and conceptual challenges inherent in the term “disinformation,” highlights how digital infrastructures shape both the problem and its perceived urgency, and synthesizes empirical evidence on the actual reach, distribution, and impact of political disinformation. The article distinguishes between individual, collective, and discursive harms, while cautioning against inflated threat narratives that outpace empirical findings. Importantly, the entry addresses the risks of regulatory overreach and centralized control. Efforts to counter disinformation may themselves undermine democratic openness, suppress dissent, and weaken societies’ capacity for collective information processing. In response, the article outlines a research agenda that prioritizes conceptual clarity, empirical rigor, and systemic analysis over alarmism. It advocates for a shift away from overstreching framings of disinformation toward more precise and differentiated understandings of digital political communication and its challenges.