Robert Post (Yale Law School) has posted The Internet, Democracy and Misinformation (in A. Koltay, C. Garden, & R. Krotoszynski (eds), Disinformation, Misinformation and Democracy (Cambridge University Press Forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper addresses the unique dangers posed to democracy by the emergence of digital information and the internet. It argues that the distribution of digital information over the internet is distinct from all prior forms of mass communication in three ways: (1) Digital information is disseminated with virtually zero marginal cost. It has thus created a virtual public sphere whose scale, virality, and cosmopolitanism differs from the traditional public sphere. (2) Digital information is distributed through phones and hence has become integrated into the practices of everyday life in unprecedented ways. (3) Mass communication in the past featured one-way communication, but the internet created forms of communication (like Meta) that are interactive. Communication on the internet is frequently akin to forms of traditional gossip that stress the distinction between insiders and outsiders.
Highly recommended.