The Critique of Pure Information by Jayson Harsin

The Critique of Pure Information by Jayson Harsin

The Critique of Pure Information offers a critical rethinking of disinformation, misinformation, and “post-truth” politics by challenging the assumption that political deception is best understood as a problem of false or impure information.

This book argues that the dominant vocabulary of “information disorder” has helped install an infocentric model of communication, one that reduces deceptive public communication to faulty content, corrupted circulation, or deficient belief. Combining conceptual history, communication theory, systematic review, and close rhetorical analysis, the book shows how deception and confusion work through rhetoric, style, genre, image-text composition, platformed circulation, affect, and public uptake. Through an extended case study of a long-circulating Trump quotation meme, it demonstrates why democratic communication cannot be repaired by fact-checking, media literacy, platform governance, or AI detection alone.

This fascinating and insightful study will be of great interest to students and scholars of media and communication, journalism, media ethics, political science, and sociology.

Jayson Harsin is Professor of Communication, Media & Culture and Director of the Center for the study of Media, Communication, and Global Change, The American University of Paris, France.