This article presents three critiques of disinformation scholarship, with an emphasis on “for-hire.” The article argues that disinformation is defined in unpromising and contradictory ways. Concepts have ontological and epistemological repercussions, and thus far, disinformation scholarship has failed to engage them. Partly because scholars are studying disinformation even when they do not use that word to label their work, the article argues that explicit disinformation scholarship tends to neglect neighboring fields and scholars—the second critique. By most definitions of the term disinformation, neighbors are researching the same object domain, which could provide rich resources for scholars newly attracted to “disinformation”: propaganda, public relations, promotional culture, political consulting/marketing, and post-truth studies. It discusses the neighbors’ deep historical and contemporary research on for-hire deceptive communication, including that pertaining to social media. The third critique argues that disinformation scholarship has a cryptonormative tendency, evident in language of disorder, threats, dysfunctions, and pollution; it therefore needs more overt normative justification (or defense of anti-normativity). The cryptonormativity also entails a tendency toward ethnocentrism. The article ends by questioning whether disinformation is conceptually suitable for the theoretical work with which it tasks itself.

中文翻译：

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对虚假信息（雇佣）奖学金的三种批评：定义漩涡、纪律不睦和加密规范性

本文提出了对虚假信息学术的三种批评，重点是“雇佣”。文章认为，虚假信息的定义方式毫无希望且自相矛盾。概念具有本体论和认识论的影响，到目前为止，虚假信息学术未能吸引它们。部分原因是学者们正在研究虚假信息，即使他们不使用这个词来标记他们的工作，文章认为，明确的虚假信息学术往往会忽视邻近的领域和学者——第二个批评。根据虚假信息一词的大多数定义，邻国正在研究相同的目标领域，这可以为新近被“虚假信息”吸引的学者提供丰富的资源：宣传、公共关系、促销文化、政治咨询/营销和后真相研究。它讨论了邻居对雇佣欺骗性通信（包括与社交媒体有关的通信）的深入历史和当代研究。第三种批评认为，虚假信息学术具有加密规范倾向，这在混乱、威胁、功能失调和污染的语言中很明显；因此，它需要更公开的规范理由（或反规范性辩护）。加密规范性还带来了种族中心主义的倾向。文章最后质疑虚假信息在概念上是否适合其本身的理论工作。