Sacha Altay

Disinformation strategies are often deployed by professionals to elicit confusion rather than to persuade. One key method for this is ‘flooding’: inserting a large number of incongruent propositions into the communication environment, with the goal of preventing people from identifying and acting on reliable information. We assess some of the basic elements of this strategy with two pre‐registered experimental studies ( N = 2607) on the topics of sunscreens and GMOs. We pitted a flooded versus a non‐flooded information environment against each other, with varying levels of accurate and inaccurate propositions. Our findings suggest that, in some cases, flooding can influence attitudes, push the evaluation of information into the realm of uncertainty and increase subjective feelings of information overload. We further speculate that flooding may elicit rational inattention and have other downstream consequences such as fatigue and passivity.

How much do experts on the information environment agree about the scale, spread, and effects of misinformation? We drew on three annual waves of the International Panel on the Information Environment expert survey to examine agreement with seven popular claims about misinformation (2023: N = 262; 2024: N = 413; 2025: N = 442; spanning 76 countries). Agreement varied widely across statements and was stable across waves. About 60% of experts agreed that falsehoods spread faster than the truth and that misinformation is widespread. About half agreed that misinformation has a substantial influence on behavior and that people readily believe what they see online; about 40% agreed that more people have become misinformed over time; and only 25% agreed that misinformation is primarily a social media problem. The surveys also revealed a persistent divide between experts who saw misinformation as widespread and consequential and those more skeptical, with sharpest disagreement on its behavioral impact and increase over time. In 2025, some experts distinguished between misperception prevalence and misinformation severity. Overall agreement varied by respondent background: agreement was higher among experts on developing countries than those on developed countries, higher among STEM researchers than social scientists, and lower among political scientists than communication scholars. Expert consensus on misinformation is partial, varies across claims and experts, and is shaped by geography and discipline.

How much misinformation do people encounter? Published estimates range from a fraction of one percent to strong majorities. We systematically reviewed 443 studies reporting 1048 estimates of misinformation prevalence, exposure, sharing, and concentration. In behavioural studies, misinformation is a median 1.3% of what people consume online; it reaches 12.0% of people at least once and makes up 13.0% of what they share. In surveys, 57.7% say they have seen misinformation and 19.8% say they have shared it. In content analyses, 23.0% of items are classified as misinformation. How misinformation was identified (by fact-checkers, domain lists, researchers, or classifiers) and at which level (sources or items) explained more of the variance between estimates than what the study was about; platform and topic explained less. The top 1% of users account for a median 70% of misinformation sharing or exposure. These results help contextualize the diversity of misinformation estimates.

The information environment is under great pressure, and so are the researchers who study it. People increasingly receive information already sorted for them, by recommendation algorithms or by generative AI systems that answer directly rather than link to sources. How do experts around the world assess threats to the information environment? In May and June 2026, the IPIE surveyed 470 researchers with expertise on 71 countries in the fourth and most diverse wave of its annual expert survey. Nearly half the experts study developing economies. This Summary for Policymakers presents the main findings of Trends in the Information Environment: 2026 Expert Survey Results (SR2026.3). The report reaches four main conclusions: AI summaries deliver speed at the expense of visits to news websites and viewpoint diversity. Conditions for research on the information environment have worsened by every measure, most notably in the USA. Experts are most worried about unaccountable platform power, followed by misinformation and polarization. Pessimism stands at a record level, and it is deepest where research conditions are rated better. The full report presents these findings in detail, with further observations on the technologies experts view most favorably and on how perceived risks from AI-generated content compare with experimental evidence.

In May and June 2026, the IPIE’s fourth annual expert survey included 470 experts studying the information environment across 71 countries, almost half of whom focused on developing economies. Pessimism has climbed to its highest level yet. This year, 76% of experts expect the information environment in their country of expertise to worsen over the coming year, up from 53% in 2023. For four years running, experts agree on what a healthy information environment needs most: accurate information and a diversity of voices. Most experts, 76%, say people can find diverse viewpoints online, but only 28% think a majority of people in their country trust the main news outlets to report politics accurately. Lack of platform accountability and misinformation are seen as the biggest threats to the information environment, and experts consider generative AI a less urgent threat. For three years in a row, experts expect generative AI to make the information environment worse over the next five years, with AI-generated video their biggest worry and AI-generated text their smallest. Experts expect AI summaries in search engines to speed up how quickly people find what they are looking for, but to cut traffic to news sites and narrow the range of viewpoints they see. Search engines again rank as the technology seen most positively, 80% positive, while views on social media, generative AI, and recommender systems are mixed to negative, 35–45% positive. Research funding remains the most frequent barrier to studying the information environment, 67%, ahead of data access, 60%, and roughly a third of experts report government-related pressures on their work. Behind these overall figures, experts in developing economies and the USA show similar patterns: they rate threats higher, report more government censorship and surveillance, and view the effects of technologies, including AI, similarly. USA experts are nearly twice as likely as experts in all other countries to report government control of funding and pressure to align research with a political agenda as main barriers to studying the information environment. Experts fall into three different groups based on their concerns: about half worry about almost every threat to the information environment, a third worry mainly about platform accountability and misinformation but not AI, and one in ten hardly worry at all.

The way a problem is framed shapes its solutions. This article reframes the problem of misinformation and examines the implications of this shift for interventions against misinformation. It advances five arguments that challenge common narratives about misinformation and invite us to rethink both the problem and its solutions. For instance, exposure to misinformation is lower than often believed, people are less gullible than commonly assumed, and misinformation often reflects, rather than causes, underlying sociopolitical issues. These insights point toward strategies that address the root causes of the problem rather than surface symptoms. Key shifts include focusing on the demand for misinformation, fostering trust in reliable sources, and strengthening democratic institutions. Combating misinformation effectively requires a clear understanding of the problem and a break with popular misconceptions about it.

Disinformation strategies are often deployed by professionals to elicit confusion rather than to persuade. One key method for this is “flooding”: inserting in the communication environment a large number of incongruent propositions in an attempt to prevent people from identifying reliable information. We assess the effect of this strategy with two pre-registered experimental studies (N = 2607) on the topics of sunscreens and GMOs. We pitted a flooded versus a non-flooded information environment against each other, with varying levels of false and true information. Our findings suggest that flooding makes the perception of reliable information more uncertain, while increasing subjective feelings of information overload. The effect of flooding was observable even in cases when participants had strong positive prior beliefs about the topic. Our results suggest that flooding may spill over to alter the perception of entire communication environments, and the detrimental effect it may have on democratic decision-making.

We agree with Ecker et al. (2025) that misinformation should not be ignored. The specific form that misbeliefs take is indeed shaped by misinformation (e.g., vaccines cause autism). However, this does not imply that misinformation causes behaviors (e.g., vaccine refusal). We view misinformation as a symptom of deeper problems. When many are willing to consume, believe, and act on misinformation, this is diagnostic of broader sociopolitical issues-such as polarization or widespread mistrust-that make misinformation appealing rather than misinformation causing these issues. In particular, we consider that attitudinal and structural roots explain both the consumption and acceptance of misinformation, on the one hand, and the behaviors ascribed to misinformation on the other. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Conspiracy theorists often prompt others to “Do your own research.” Could a general desire for such epistemic autonomy—to make up one’s own mind rather than deferring to others’ testimony—explain why some people are attracted to conspiracy theories? In four pre-registered studies (United States and United Kingdom, N = 1196), we test whether participants more likely to believe in conspiracy theories have a stronger preference for forming their own beliefs independently. Participants chose between doing a difficult perceptual task themselves or relying on an expert’s answer. Internal fixed-effect meta-analyses revealed a weak but statistically significant relationship between belief in conspiracy theories and preference for first-hand evidence. By contrast, the relationship between epistemic individualism and this preference was stronger and more robust. This suggests that, although individuals endorsing conspiracy theories express a stronger preference for “doing their own research,” their behavior mostly does not match this preference in non-conspiratorial contexts.

Can the news help people be more resilient to misinformation? Altay et al. found that news use increases surveillance knowledge and awareness of true and false news, while decreasing belief in false news. We conducted a two-wave panel survey ( N = 3,395) to replicate these findings in two new countries: France and Germany. The replication reinforces the conclusions of the original study: we found that higher news consumption predicted greater surveillance knowledge acquisition across the waves, as well as greater awareness of and belief in true news stories. News consumption also increased awareness of false news stories without increasing belief in false news stories. These findings strengthen the idea that news helps people become more informed and better at discerning truth from falsehoods.