Diagnosis, Prevention, and Cure for Misinformation

Misinformation has become a widespread problem in contemporary society, harming the most vulnerable sections in particular. It incurs a high cost on everyone - socially, politically, and even financially. Much of the progress made in tackling misinformation, however, has only offered relatively simple solutions by taking a narrow view of “misinformation” itself. We discuss the various nuances of the term, illustrating the technical difficulties that arise from them, and propose a multiplicity of context-sensitive modeling approaches that may prove to be fruitful in addressing these difficulties. A tremendous amount of work remains to be done to ensure our inoculation from misinformation and its harmful effects, and much of this work, we argue, requires collaborative effort across disciplines. It is our hope that this article serves as a call to further such research in this field.