Ryan Calo, Chris Coward, Emma Spiro, Kate Starbird and Jevin West:

Research into propaganda, conspiracy theory, and other distortions of information have a long history spanning multiple disciplines, but the rising tide of distorted and manipulative information has led to an increasingly visible, if still disparate, field of misinformation studies. This emerging field has the potential to inform our understanding of misinformation and the legal options to constrain misinformation and to advance our understanding of collective online behavior (8). Given the urgency and real-world impact of this issue, it is critical that the evolving policies in government and industry are informed by this research but also that the research itself is informed by these policy discussions. Our hope is that eventually, this collective work will make the field of misinformation studies obsolete.