Understanding Misinformation. International Symposium, 9 December 2024
Kim M. Hajek, Paul Trauttmansdorff, Sabina Leonelli 03/03/2025 | Report-Backs
Misinformation, both around scientific topics and in the political domain, is well recognised as a major issue in today’s society (of even more pressing interest since we first penned this report), and has already attracted major investments and its own dedicated research domain of ‘misinformation science’. A well-attended event held at Munich’s Hansa House saw a group of international researchers discuss various perspectives from which to approach the issue of addressing misinformation in science and beyond. The symposium was hosted by the Ethical Data Initiative (EDI), the TUM Think Tank, and the Chair of Philosophy and History of Science and Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). It brought Sabina Leonelli, EDI director and TUM Professor, into conversation with international collaborators Maya J. Goldenberg and Marcel Boumans. Goldenberg, who is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Guelph, Canada, and Boumans, Professor of History of Economics at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, were hosted by Leonelli’s group in Munich to collaborate intensively on the issue of understanding misinformation.
Marcel Boumans, Sabina Leonelli, Maya J. Goldenberg [Image credit: Kim M. Hajek]
Leonelli, Goldenberg, and Boumans, as philosophers and historians of science, addressed their views to all those engaged in studying or attempting to counter misinformation (and disinformation—any difference between the two was not at issue here). They notably drew attention to two broad approaches to the question: the ‘normative’ and the ‘situational’. The normative approach, which is prevalent in misinformation science, holds that it is possible to distinguish ‘true’ information from its erroneous or ‘fake’ counterparts. Understanding and combating misinformation then becomes a matter of identifying the characteristics of each form, often by technological or automated means, and applying them to eradicate misinformation from various platforms. Similarly, such characteristics—appeals to negative emotions, for example—would form the basis of educational campaigns teaching (online) citizens what to look out for.
In contrast, a situational approach to misinformation stresses that information is not meaningful in isolation from context. More is at stake, in many cases, than the opposition of truth and falsity. People make sense of information through processes involving many localised, social, and experiential factors, such that a ‘true’ fact reported out of context can function to produce misinformation, for instance. Under a situational approach, misinformation should be studied and dealt with on a case-by-case basis, with respectful attention to the forms of sense-making involved and their implications under the circumstances at hand. Drawing an analogy with her previous work exploring vaccine hesitancy, Goldenberg pointed to the role of social factors in the uptake of misinformation, stressing that it is often unhelpful to treat sections of the public as having some ‘knowledge deficit’. Yet, as Boumans acknowledged, there is a much greater time commitment entailed by the situational approach, as compared with potentially automated technocratic measures that often follow from a normative approach.
Maya Goldenberg [Image credit: Kim M. Hajek]
Speakers concluded that the normative and situational approaches are complementary, each more appropriate under certain circumstances. Given the widespread nature of misinformation and its rapid spread, it is simply not feasible to adopt a situational approach only when responding to misinformation. Significant skills, time and resources are required to examine a case in depth with regard to its situational features. When there is some time-pressure, therefore, (automated) general-purpose tools (for example, so-called fact-checking tools) that target normatively derived characteristics of misinformation can be much more effective in identifying and eradicating it. However, such tools need to be evaluated regularly in relation to their effectiveness for specific settings and goals—a situational perspective becomes crucial here.
Commentators Silke Beck (TUM Professor for Sociology of Science), Paul Trauttmansdorff, and Kim Hajek (the latter both TUM and EDI senior researchers), contributed reflections on the two ways of viewing misinformation, by adding examples from their particular areas of expertise, notably engagement with science policy and institutions, STS scholarship, and the history of efforts to demarcate science from other forms of knowledge. A consensus emerged, on the one hand, that historians, philosophers, and social scholars of science tend to undertake detailed contextual studies when investigating questions connected to misinformation. This might be unpacking the effect of using metaphors of disease, like ‘virus’, to describe the spread of misinformation, for example, or analysing how areas of study become constituted as legitimate, rather than ‘pseudoscientific’ (e.g. hypnosis). When shared appropriately with the wider public, these can help to counter the unhelpful ‘positivistic’ view of information as isolated data, and of science practice as straightforward testing of hypotheses. On the other hand, when it comes to the way the public views scientific knowledge or controversial institutions (e.g. the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), situational studies of how they function can seem to damage public trust in scientific practices and their outputs. Hence, scholars should also aim to make a constructive contribution, for example by sketching positive narratives about the ways (scientific) information production might proceed in the future.
Silke Beck [Image credit: Kim M. Hajek]
The event concluded with a broader discussion between speakers, commentators, and the audience, which further probed some of the complexities involved in taking a situational approach, as well as introducing additional considerations to the debate, such as how normative and situational approaches relate to policies of public goods. Following the symposium, TUM Masters students in the audience analysed the issues raised as part of their science studies degrees. Just as the distinction between normative and situational was central to the symposium, it also constitutes the key thread in Leonelli, Goldenberg, and Boumans’ forthcoming book Understanding Misinformation, currently under contract with the Elements Series of Cambridge University Press. The book, which is expected to appear in Open Access format in early 2026, provides a systematic and synthetic argument for the complementary nature of different perspectives on misinformation. STS scholars will find this monograph useful not only for reaching a better qualitative, historicised and situated understanding of information as well as for identifying ways to combat not just the dissemination, but the emergence and successful re-purposing of malevolent ways of interpreting information.
Links for further information and reading:
Boumans, Marcel J. and Ferwerda, Joras and Goldenberg, Maya J. and Leonelli, Sabina and Russo, Federica and Traag, Vincent A. and Wardekker, Arjan, Fostering Trustworthy Information. Countering Disinformation When There Are No Bare Facts (September 04, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4953170 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4953170. [Note: This paper is an outcome of a preceding workshop on Fact, Fake and Fiction, held at the University of Leiden.]
Author Bio Kim M. Hajek and Paul Trauttmansdorff are research fellows in the Chair group for Philosophy and History of Science and Technology at the Technical University of Munich, led by Prof. Sabina Leonelli. All three are part of the Ethical Data Initiative, a joint effort between the Technical University of Munich and the University of Exeter. In her research, Hajek draws upon methods from literary and narrative studies to understand knowledge-making in the human sciences, with a focus on the history of case-based reasoning in psychology. Trauttmansdorff is a researcher in the social studies of science and technology, and his work focuses on the controversies around digital borders, infrastructures, and biometric data. Leonelli investigates the roles of technology, data, models and collaborative methods within science, aiming for an understanding of knowledge production that can support equitable, responsible, engaged and sustainable research practices.
