Misinformation in the Era of AI and Media Oligarchy
For decades, the internet has promised openness, connection, and the democratisation of knowledge. But what we are witnessing in 2025 is something far more complex: an environment where propaganda is plentiful, truth is hard to distinguish from lies; visibility is high, but clarity is low.
The speed and scale of content production today is unprecedented: Generative AI tools can fabricate photorealistic images, videos, and audio in seconds. Gartner predicts that 80% of online content will be synthetically generated within the next year — a shift that dramatically reduces the public’s ability to verify truth. And UNESCO reports a 900% increase in deepfake videos since 2020, most of them used to target women, activists, and political figures.
Regulators are struggling to keep up with this. AI-assisted disinformation has already been used to influence elections in Latin America, escalate protests in West Africa, manipulate Rohingya communities in Myanmar, and disrupt feminist organising across South and South-East Asia.
The barrier to producing disinformation has effectively collapsed; what once required sophisticated operations now takes a laptop and a well-worded prompt
The Crisis of Media Concentration
Simultaneously, independent journalism is shrinking. More than half of the world’s population now lives in countries where journalism is “seriously constrained,” according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF). And since 2019, over 300 news outlets have closed in the UK and US alone, largely due to collapsing revenue models.
In many countries, governments are tightening control: shutting down media outlets, censoring critical journalists, or flooding information spaces with state narratives. RSF warns of a sustained global decline in press freedom, with journalism increasingly “under political pressure,” and reporters facing intimidation, surveillance, arrest, and violence.
The result? An ecosystem where a small number of actors influence what billions see — and where the architecture of information itself is distorted by profit motives, political interests, and opaque algorithms.
Confusion, in this context, is a strategy. When everything looks plausible and nothing feels verifiable, power becomes harder to challenge. If we cannot tell what is real, we cannot organise around shared truth. And when truth is unstable, those with the most money, access, and control fill the vacuum with narratives that serve their interests.
And the impact of this is unequal: Marginalised communities feel it impact first and most forcefully and misinformation is often weaponised by far-right parties to target religious minorities, migrants, LGBTQ+ communities, women, and racialised groups. It is used to inflame political tensions and increase polarisation – making it easier to control communities. In contexts where governments already exert control over speech, synthetic media becomes another tool of repression. An unstable information landscape always amplifies existing power imbalances.
However, amidst this crisis, there are paths forward. The scale of the problem does not make it unsolvable. There are ways to build resilience — individually, collectively, and systemically.
On an individual level, building a trusted information diet is critical in this moment. We can actively choose to follow outlets with transparent editorial standards, actively seeking out credible, independent journalism, and sharing only what we can verify is an act of protest against the media establishment.
Collectively, community-led fact-checking and documentation are also increasingly essential, especially where institutional journalism is weak or under threat. Local reporters, citizen journalists, community radio, and movement media often capture truths that mainstream outlets ignore. Supporting these voices through funding, amplification, and protection supports democratic infrastructure.
And systemically, we need structural safeguards that match the scale of the threat. Regulation of generative AI, stronger protections for journalists, public-interest media funding, transparent algorithmic governance, global commitments to media pluralism and cross-border information solidarity networks. The fight against misinformation is ultimately about power — who shapes public narrative, who gets heard, and who is silenced.
The work ahead is challenging, but possible.
Even in this era of manipulation and distortion, people continue to seek the truth. They are still asking questions. They are still trying to navigate complexity with integrity and care. And communities, movements, and journalists around the world are fighting daily to ensure truth and transparency.
If we want meaningful change, we must create the conditions that make truth matter: independent journalism, accessibility and communities equipped to navigate nuance and context.
In an era where confusion is manufactured at scale, clarity becomes a form of resistance.
