Nelson Ribeiro & Barbie Zelizer (Eds.): Media and Propaganda in an Age of Disinformation

Abstract

A review of an edited volume arguing that the older concept of propaganda should be restored to the centre of debate on the contemporary information environment, in place of the newer vocabulary of fake news, misinformation and post-truth, which obscures the continuity between present-day influence operations and long-standing strategies of information warfare. The review follows the volume across its three parts: the conceptual and historical framing, including the tendency to externalise propaganda as something only adversaries do; the non-Western cases (China, Russia, Africa, with digital colonialism and platform power); and the chapters closest to psychology, in particular Greene's experimental work on how exposure to misinformation produces false memories consistent with prior beliefs and identity. The review assesses the volume's interdisciplinary reach as its main strength, notes the limited quantitative and experimental psychological evidence, and identifies the absence of a Central and Eastern European perspective as a gap that regional research is well placed to fill. It closes by pointing to the volume's relevance for work on the ethics and security of artificial intelligence, cognitive warfare and resilience-building interventions.