Understanding the Information Environment: Insights from the Majority World

Based on interviews with 54 experts across 29 countries, Lai's report documents the systematic blind spots of Global North disinformation research. The findings are pointed: most of what the field knows about disinformation — its mechanisms, its effects, its countermeasures — is derived from Western contexts and Western platforms, and generalises poorly to the majority of the world's information environments. Researchers in the Global South consistently identify different threat actors, different platform dynamics, and different social contexts that the dominant frameworks fail to capture.

The report has direct implications for anyone working on global counter-disinformation strategy. It challenges the assumption that frameworks developed in response to Russian interference in Western elections translate meaningfully to disinformation contexts in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, or Latin America. It also identifies specific research priorities — including the role of messaging apps, the significance of local language content, and the political economy of local media — that the field needs to address to build genuinely global knowledge.