Planning in the Era of Misinformation and Disinformation

The rapid proliferation of misinformation and disinformation through mass and social media has fueled increasing social and political polarization and distrust, increasing conflict across scales of plan and policy-making that hamper collective decision-making processes. When traditional forms of evidence (e.g., data, science, public testimony) are dismissed as fake news and there is little sense of a shared lived experience and knowledge, dispute resolution practices at the core of planning practice become inadequate to handle such situations. As society questions what is real within the growing isolation of echo chambers, trust in the institutions in which planning practice and policy making are embedded are increasingly eroded. In this thematic issue, we seek to cover a broad range of perspectives and analyses on this matter. Examples could include studies explaining how misinformation and disinformation have interfered with planning processes and outcomes, how misinformation and/or disinformation were addressed in these processes, and/or how effective these strategies were. Techniques supporting the scholarship range from literature review and case studies, to research on participatory practices, to data analytics, visualization, and/or computational approaches.

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