An Old Friend in New Guises: Disinformation Targeting Lgbti+ Communities in the Era of New Structures of Social Mediation

As the debate on 'disinformation ', the 'post-truth ' era and social media regulation gains momentum in academia and public discourse, LGBTI+ scholars and civil society are increasingly called upon to take a stand, respond to, and participate in multistakeholder efforts to counter the so-called 'identity-based disinformation'. However, as many scholars have highlighted, disinformation is far from being a new challenge for sexual and gender minorities. As in the global HIV pandemic of the 1980s, members of the LGBTI+ community have faced massive disinformation campaigns led by traditional media corporations and relatively little contested by public opinion. What explains the recent changes in the perception of political information about LGBTI+ issues? How does it connect with the growing influence of social media platforms and the global opposition to LGBTI+ rights? Drawing on a dialogue between the literature on political sociology and the political economy of communication, this paper approaches disinformation targeting LGBTI+ communities not ‘a new face’ of a global ‘backlash’ but as part of a larger political dispute over the functions that communication and information must assume at this historical moment. The argument is that the internet and social media, as structures of social mediation controlled by large capitalist corporations, tend to accentuate the confusion between the advertising and propaganda functions that have always characterised communication as a social form. Thus, more than being approached as “lies” or “disorder”, disinformation should be understood as a result of a process in which political positions prevail over the public principle of quality information. By adopting such a perspective, the paper aims to integrate the analysis of disinformation on LGBTI+ issues into the power struggles around the information market.