The Contextual Conditions: The Factors that Today Contribute to the Successful Disinformation

Usually, disinformation phenomenon is discussed following the web and social media evolution, thus excluding numerous elements that have contributed to the rooting of the phenomenon and to the current success of disinformation campaigns. The work offers a particular theoretical framework to understand the effects that disinformation strategies have on the current democratic context: starting from the insertion of the disinformation in a broader phenomenological framework that holds together the cultural, technological and human elements that allow today’s disinformation strategies to generate significant social and political implications. The cultural element explains how the characteristics of postmodernism contributed to the public’s detachment from the authoritativeness of professional information and the birth of a truly alternative public sphere. The technological element has influenced the traditional editorial practices of news production and distribution, deteriorated the already fragile boundaries of journalistic authority and attributed an increasingly important role to the prosumer user and his preferences; this has favored the creation of hyper-partisan information spaces and amplified the human cognitive elements: the confirmation bias.