What We Know — and Don’t Know — about the Real Impact of Disinformation

In the last decade, disinformation has become a matter of widespread concern among governments, citizens, international bodies, digital platforms and academics. However, there is one key question that persists: what is the real impact of disinformation? The answer is not trivial, and looking for evidence is particularly challenging because of methodological and epistemological reasons. This has sparked an intense debate between academics about the magnitude of the problem and its ability to modify beliefs and behaviors.

To understand this debate, it is crucial to acknowledge that the main concern does not arise from the novelty of the phenomenon, but from the characteristics of the surroundings where it operates, which modify the scale and complexity of the issue. Disinformation is not new: rumors, propaganda and falsehoods have existed at all times, in all societies. What has changed radically is the information ecosystem in which they circulate. The Internet has drastically reduced the costs of accessing, producing and sharing information. Anybody can create false narratives and reach massive audiences with unprecedented speed. Besides, the very dynamics of the web and social media offers monetary incentives to those who generate more clicks, turning the production of “explosive” — albeit false — information into a source of income. This way, the current information ecosystem creates particularly favorable conditions for the spread of disinformation narratives.

The Magnitude of the Phenomenon

Some researchers claim that the fact that there is a fertile ground for disinformation to spread does not necessarily mean that it has a large impact on society, and they support this claim with studies that show that, on average, people’s exposure to false content is limited (Altay, Berriche, & Heuer, 2023; Allen et al., 2020; Acerbi, Altay & Mercier et al., 2022).

An assessment of the investigations used as sources for this argument reveals at least two main methodological issues: on the one hand, how exposure to disinformation is measured; on the other hand, what type of content is effectively considered disinformation.

For example, some studies only analyze access to a predetermined and reduced group of disinformation sites, discarding thousands of sites, accounts and platforms that also produce and spread misleading content. This form of measurement tends to underestimate the phenomenon, as it assumes that disinformation circulates exclusively in certain clearly identifiable domains, when in practice it takes much more diverse forms. Others focus exclusively on measuring the reach and engagement of disinformation posts on Twitter, which is a platform that works as an arena for political discussion, but is only used by a very small sector of the population. Overall, and due to methodological difficulties, this type of research oftentimes does not take into consideration other relevant sources of disinformation, such as speeches made by political leaders, communicators or influencers, that many times are spread through traditional media outlets or massive platforms with high levels of legitimacy. Content that disseminates on private messaging channels, like WhatsApp or Telegram, is also not included. Here, information spreads in an opaque manner that is difficult to trace. In addition, there is disinformation that spreads offline — in daily conversations, local media outlets or community spaces — that is completely excluded from these measurements.

The second problem is how to define disinformation. Most studies focus exclusively on verifiable false claims, but disinformation is not limited to explicit lies. It also includes misleading arguments, deliberate omissions, half-truths or information that is technically correct, but taken out of context to encourage wrong interpretations (Watts et al., 2021). In fact, some research shows that biased or misinterpreted information has a greater negative impact than information that’s purely false; for instance, on vaccination intentions (van der Linden & Kyrychenko, 2024; Allen et al., 2024). In many cases, it’s not a matter of false information, but rather biased interpretative frameworks that guide our understanding of the facts. In other cases and contexts, narratives driven by political figures or traditional media outlets establish the frameworks from which people interpret the information they later find online. In that sense, disinformation does not operate solely through isolated pieces of content, but as a cumulative process of meaning construction (Pasquetto, Lim & Bradshaw, 2024). Lastly, only measuring individual access to specific websites ignores the fact that the Internet is a profoundly participative process, where the notions of truth and evidence are collectively bargained within communities, both online and offline. People don’t consume information in an isolated or passive manner; they interact, argue, validate and reinforce shared narratives. It is in this social process – rather than in the mere exposure to specific content – where disinformation unfolds most of its impact.

Consequences of Disinformation in People’s Behavior

The other key point of the debate revolves around whether disinformation has direct consequences on people’s beliefs or behavior. Tackling this question from an empirical approach presents methodological difficulties (such as isolating disinformation exposure from all other social and cultural factors that shape beliefs and attitudes) and deeper epistemological problems. In complex social phenomena, such as forming political opinions or social attitudes, demanding evidence of direct and isolated causality can represent an inappropriate yardstick for assessing relevance.

Beliefs and behaviors do not emerge as a lineal response to a unique informative stimulus; they are built from multiple interconnected factors, like previous experiences, political identities, institutional trust, social contexts, cultural frameworks and group dynamics (Pasquetto, Lim & Bradshaw, 2024, Ecker et al., 2025). From this perspective, and as Eckert et al. argue in their 2025 study, “the fact that behaviors can have multiple determinants at an individual level does not exclude the possibility that disinformation has its own effects (…) and a causal factor does not need to be the only one to be relevant.” 

In line with this approach, there is consistent evidence that shows a correlation between exposure or support to disinformative narratives and specific beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.

– In the public health sphere, numerous studies find correlations between believing in specific disinformation (like the idea that vaccines cause autism) and lower vaccination intention. During the COVID-19 pandemic, adhering to false or misleading narratives was linked to lower vaccination intention, lower compliance with health measures, and greater distrust of health authorities (Allen et al., 2024; Lee et al., 2022; Loomba et al., 2021; Pierri et al., 2022, among others). 

– In the political sphere, the continuing narrative regarding alleged fraud in the 2020 U.S. election illustrates this dynamic. Although it does not explain on itself the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, different studies indicate that that piece of disinformation was a key mobilization factor because it reinforced the idea of illegitimacy and offered a framework that legitimized violence as an answer. It was not the only cause, but it definitely fueled the conflict.

– In the electoral sphere, available evidence suggests that disinformation rarely produces direct changes in a voter’s decision. However, the fact that disinformation does not change our votes does not mean that it does not have a significant impact on democracy. Its impact might manifest itself in ways that are less visible, but potentially more harmful, such as electoral demobilization, confusion in electoral processes — how and when to vote — and erosion of trust in the legitimacy of democratic processes (Adam 2024). An example of this dynamic was seen in a study that linked the spread of conspiracy theories about the 2020 electoral fraud with a slight decrease in electoral participation among voters exposed to these narratives (Green et al., 2022). Although the aggregated effect was quantitatively small, the finding is relevant: even small impacts can become significant when they affect the disposition to participate or undermine trust in democratic institutions. In this sense, disinformation does not need to change the political opinion of a majority to have relevant consequences; it is enough for it to deactivate or radicalize specific groups to amplify tensions and weaken basic democratic norms.

Overall, the debate about the impact of disinformation should not focus on whether it acts as a direct cause of behaviors, but on understanding how it affects real social life: accumulatively and in interaction with political and cultural contexts. The fact that its effects are hard to isolate or quantify does not make them irrelevant. Ignoring disinformation because it does not produce immediate massive changes means underestimating persistent processes, such as an erosion of institutional trust, citizen demobilization and specific harms in public and individual health. Acknowledging this complexity is fundamental to design effective responses that protect both information integrity and democratic health in our societies.

Literature Consulted

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This site is part of the project ‘Promoting reliable information and tackling disinformation in Latin America’, coordinated by Chequeado at the regional level and funded by the European Union. Its content is the sole responsibility of LatamChequea and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

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