Each communication revolution reshapes power itself. Control over who speaks and who listens determines how truth, belief, and influence evolve. When printing presses appeared, monarchs and clerics lost their monopoly on thought. When radio and television emerged, charismatic personalities gained direct emotional access to mass audiences. The internet completed the transformation by collapsing distance altogether. Anyone with a connection gained a potential megaphone. The result is no longer a conversation but a storm of persuasion.
Disinformation thrives in that storm. The shift from one-to-one communication to one-to-many created conditions where reach outpaces responsibility. A handful of networked actors—political strategists, propagandists, influencers, or troll farms—exploit amplification algorithms to appear omnipresent. Visibility masquerades as legitimacy. The same mechanisms that once democratized speech now industrialize deceit. A rumor or fabricated claim moves from obscurity to virality within hours, shaped not by its truth but by its emotional voltage.
Every major leap in communication technology rewired human relationships and redrew influence hierarchies. Printing empowered reformers, radio empowered demagogues, television empowered image-makers, and the internet empowered everyone—and no one in particular. Social media fused them all, enabling the organized manipulation of perception through bots, fake identities, and coordinated inauthentic behavior.
Disinformation exploits connectivity’s architecture. When millions receive messages from strangers who appear authentic, authority blurs. Emotional contagion replaces critical reasoning. A small number of coordinated sources dominate attention while authentic voices drown in noise. The age of information abundance becomes the age of epistemic confusion. Control of narrative flow no longer belongs to states or editors but to those who understand the mathematics of virality. Truth competes not with lies, but with speed.
We See What Others Cannot
