Freedom of expression, disinformation and democracy in the digital age
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70622/2236-8957.2025.693Keywords:
Freedom of expression, disinformation, democracy, fake news, digital platforms, regulationAbstract
Disinformation has become one of the main threats to democratic life and to the very notion of factual truth. This article examines the phenomenon from a theoretical and bibliographical perspective, discussing its cognitive, social, and technological foundations. It analyses the distinction between misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information, as well as the multiple forms that false or misleading information takes in the digital environment. The study examines the psychological factors that contribute to human credulity, including cognitive biases and the dynamics of echo chambers and filter bubbles. It further investigates the relationship between political lies and democratic erosion, emphasizing the role of algorithms and digital platforms’ business models in amplifying disinformation. Finally, it discusses the challenge of regulating digital platforms, the responsibility of technology companies, and the need to reconcile freedom of expression with protection against informational abuses.
References
ARENDT, Hannah. Verdade e política. In: ARENDT, Hannah. Entre o passado e o futuro. 8. ed. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2016.
BRASIL. Senado Federal. Projeto de Lei nº 2.628, de 2022. Dispõe sobre proteção integral de crianças e adolescentes no ambiente digital (Estatuto Digital da Criança e do Adolescente). Brasília, DF: Senado, 2022. Disponível em: https://share.google/3WBe6HCZ9KdILvzNp. Acesso em: 18 nov. 2025.
BRASIL. Supremo Tribunal Federal (2. Turma). Recursos Extraordinário nº 1.037.396/SP (Tema 987). Direito processual civil e do trabalho. Liquidação / Cumprimento / Execução. Obrigação de fazer / não fazer [...]. Recorrente: Facebook Serviços Online do Brasil Ltda. Relator: Min. Dias Toffoli, julgado em 29 mar. 2017. Brasília, DF: Supremo Tribunal Federal, 2017a. Disponível em: https://portal.stf.jus.br/processos/detalhe.asp?incidente=5160549. Acesso em: 18 nov. 2025.
BRASIL. Supremo Tribunal Federal (1. Turma). Recursos Extraordinário nº 1.057.258/ MG (Tema 533). Direito do consumidor. Responsabilidade do fornecedor. Indenização por dano moral. Recorrente: Google Brasil Internet Ltda. Relator: Min. Luiz Fux, julgado em 27 jun. 2017. Brasília, DF: Supremo Tribunal Federal, 2017b. Disponível em: https://portal.stf.jus.br/processos/detalhe.asp?incidente=5217273. Acesso em: 18 nov. 2025.
ÇELEN, Bogaçhan; KARIV, Shachar. Distinguishing informational cascades from herd behavior in the laboratory. Econometrics Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 22 out. 2003. Disponível em: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~kariv/CK_II.pdf. Acesso em: 18 nov. 2025.
COELHO, Gabriela. Ministro do TSE determina remoção de vídeos sobre “kit gay”. Consultor Jurídico, São Paulo, 16 out. 2018. Disponível em: https://www.conjur.com.br/2018-out-16/ministro-tse-determina-remocao-videos-kit-gay/. Acesso em: 11 nov. 2022.
COLEMAN, Alistair. French election: misinformation targets candidates and voting system. BBC, London, 22 abr. 2022. Disponível em: https://www.bbc.com/news/61179620. Acesso em: 17 nov. 2025.
DOTEY, Andrew; ROM, Hassan; VACA, Carmen. Information diffusion in social media. Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 11 dez. 2011. Disponível em: https://snap.stanford.edu/class/cs224w-2011/proj/mrom_Finalwriteup_v1.pdf. Acesso em: 10 nov. 2022.
FALLIS, Don. What is Disinformation? Library Trends, [s.l.], v. 63, n. 3, p. 401-426, 2015.
FESTINGER, Leo. A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957.
FRANCE, Anatole. La vie en fleur. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1922.
JACK, Caroline. Lexicon of Lies: Terms for Problematic Information. New York: Data & Society Research Institute, 2017.
KAHNEMAN, Daniel. Rápido e devagar. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2011.
HAN, Byung-Chul. No enxame: reflexões sobre o digital. Lisboa: Relógio D´Água, 2016.
LEVINE, Timothy R. DUPED: truth-default theory and the social science of lying and deception. University Alabama Press, 2019.
MCPHERSON, M.; SMITH-LOVIN, L.; COOK, J. M. Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, San Mateo, CA, v. 27, n. 1, p. 415–444, 2001. Disponível em: https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.415. Acesso em: 17 nov. 2025.
MERCIER, Hugo. Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.
MERCIER, Hugo; SPERBER, Dan. The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017.
MILL, John Stuart. Sobre a Liberdade. Tradução de Pedro Madeira. Lisboa: Edições 70, 2016.
MODGIL, Sachin; SINGH, Rohit Kumar; GUPTA, Shivam; e DENNEHY, Denis. A confirmation bias view on social media induced polarisation during Covid-19. Information Systems Frontiers, Heidelberg, DE, v. 26, n. 2, p. 417-441, 2024. Disponível em: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10796-021-10222-9.pdf. Acesso em: 11 nov. 2022.
MOYNIHAN, Daniel Patrick. Daniel Patrick Moynihan: a portrait in letters of an american visionary. New York: PublicAffairs, 2010. Introdução, p. 2.
ORWELL, George. 1984. Tradução de Wilson Velloso. 29. ed. São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 2004.
PANTAZI, Myrto; KLEIN, Olivier; KISSINE, Mikhail. Is Justice Blind or Myopic? Judgement & Decision Making, Cambridge, UK, v. 15, n. 2, p. 214-229, mar. 2020.
PARISIER, Eli. O filtro invisível: o que a internet está escondendo de você. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2011.
PARNELL, Tamsin. “Brexit and Disinformation”. In: MACI, Stefania et al. The Routledge Handbook of Discourse and Disinformation. London: Routledge, 2024.
PASQUALE, Frank. The black box society: the secret algorithms that control money and information. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.
POST-TRUTH. In: OXFORD Dictionaries: word of the year 2016. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Disponível em: https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2016/. Acesso em: 19 set. 2025.
QUATTROCIOCCHI, Walter. How does misinformation spread online? World Economic Forum, Cologny, GB, 14 jan. 2016. Disponível em: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2016/01/q-a-walter-quattrociocchi-digital-wildfires/. Acesso em: 11 nov. 2022.
RECUERO, Raquel; GRUZD, Anatolyi. Cascatas de fake news políticas: um estudo de caso no Twitter. Galaxia, São Paulo, n. 41, p. 31-47, maio/ago. 2019. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/gal/a/Kvxg4btPzLYdxXk77rGrmJS/?lang=pt&format=pdf. Acesso em: 10 nov. 2022.
RITCHIE, Hannah. Read all about it: the biggest fake news stories of 2016. CNBC, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 30 dez. 2016. Disponível em: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/30/read-all-about-it-the-biggest-fake-news-stories-of-2016.html. Acesso em: 11 nov. 2022.
RODRIGUES, Henrique. Mamadeira de piroca: perfis que espalharam boato em 2018 seguem atuando contra o PT. Revista Fórum, [s.l.], 25 ago. 2022. Disponível em: https://revistaforum.com.br/politica/2022/8/25/mamadeira-de-piroca-perfis-que-espalharam-boato-em-2018-seguem-atuando-contra-pt-122234.html. Acesso em: 10 nov. 2022.
STANOVICH, Keith Stanovich; WEST, Richard. Individual differences in reasoning: implications for the rationality debate. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Cambridge, n. 23, p. 645-65, 2000.
STANOVICH, Keith E. Rationality and the Reflective Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
SUNSTEIN, Cass. Conformity: the power of social influences. New York: New York University Press, 2019.
SUNSTEIN, Cass R. Liars: falsehoods and free speech in an age of deception. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.
SUNSTEIN, Cass. #Republic: divided democracy in the age of social media. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.
TVERSKY, Amos; KAHNEMAN, Daniel. Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Science, [s.l.], v. 185, n. 4157, p. 1124-1131, 1974.
VOSOUGHI, Soroush; ROY, Deb; ARAL, Sinan. The spread of true and false news online. Science, Washington, DC, v. 359, n. 6380, p. 1146-1151, 9 mar. 2018. Disponível em: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146. Acesso em: 10 nov. 2022.
WARDLE, Claire; DERAKHSHAN, Hossein. Thinking about ‘information disorder’: formats of misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information. In: IRETON, Cherilyn; POSETTI, Julie. Journalism, fake news and disinformation. Paris: UNESCO, 2018. Disponível em: https://bibliotecadigital.tse.jus.br/xmlui/bitstream/handle/bdtse/6339/2018_ireton_journalism_fake_news.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Acesso em: 10 nov. 2022.
WU, Tim. The attention merchants: the epic scramble to get inside our heads. New York: Knopf, 2016.
ZUBOFF, Shoshana. The age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. New York: PublicAffairs, 2019.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 André Gustavo Corrêa de Andrade
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in this Journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the Journal of Constitutional Research the right of first publication with the article simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International which allows sharing the work with recognition of the authors and its initial publication in this Journal.
- Authors are able to take on additional contracts separately, for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the paper published in this Journal (eg.: publishing in institutional repository or as a book), with a recognition of its initial publication in this Journal.
- Authors are allowed and encouraged to publish their work online (eg.: in institutional repositories or on their personal website) at any point before or during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as increase the impact and the citation of the published work (see the Effect of Open Access).
