The Disinformation Age: Politics, Technology, and Disruptive Communication in the United States

W. Lance Bennett — professor of political communication at the University of Washington — and Steven Livingston — professor of media and public affairs at George Washington — bring together leading political communication scholars to examine the structural and institutional conditions that have made the United States particularly vulnerable to disinformation and political manipulation. The contributors address the decline of institutional trust, the transformation of the media environment, the role of social media platforms, the exploitation of political polarisation, and the specific disinformation strategies of domestic and foreign actors.

The volume is distinguished from journalistic accounts by its analytical depth and its systematic attention to structural rather than episodic explanations for disinformation's effectiveness. The argument that emerges is that the disinformation problem is not primarily a problem of bad actors deploying clever tactics, but of a political communication system that has been structurally degraded by decades of polarisation, media fragmentation, and platform incentives that reward engagement over accuracy. For practitioners who need to understand why the American information environment is so difficult to defend, and what structural reforms might actually help, this is the most rigorous available academic account.