Unseeing propaganda: How communication scholars learned to love commercial media

Abstract

A new disinformation age is upon us—or so it seems. But much of what appears to be unprecedent-ed is not new at all. Concerns about misinformation’s effects on democracy are as old as media. The many systemic failures abetting Trump’s ascendance—as well as more recent election- and pandem-ic-related conspiracies—were decades in the making. Yet, our degraded information systems es-caped sufficient scrutiny for so long. Why?