Of Politics and Playbooks: Silencing Disinformation Research(ers) in Times of Autocracy
Updated: Aug 24
Taylor & Francis
The enforced demise of Clyde Miller’s Institute for Propaganda Analysis—shut down in 1942 under accusations of communist sympathy and insufficient loyalty to the American ideal—resonates today amid coordinated campaigns to silence disinformation researchers.
This essay examines these campaigns, focusing particularly on Brazil. It begins by situating disinformation research within a matrix of democracy and autocracy, arguing that under current conditions, disinformation researchers´ work acts as an extension to that of a civil society set against the onset of autocracy.
Against this backdrop, the essay poses a central question derived from Arundhati Roy’s open-ended observation about the resemblances of authoritarian politics: do campaigns to silence disinformation researchers follow a playbook or do they spread via osmosis, as similar repertoires converge across structurally comparable authoritarian contexts? Tracing these dynamics across the US, the Philippines, Thailand, and India, the essay culminates in a granular account of how NetLab—a social media observatory at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro—experienced a campaign to discredit and shut down its research on disinformation and social media regulation.
It concludes that amid constricting space for critical expression, disinformation research continues to manifest as democratic resistance to those who would see it undone and that it should be protected on that basis.
How to cite: Fitzgerald, J., Santini, R. M., & Salles, D. (2026). Of Politics and Playbooks: Silencing Disinformation Research(ers) in Times of Autocracy. Journalism History, 52(3), 276–292. https://doi.org/10.1080/00947679.2026.2696257
