Abstract
The Anthropocene is the name that scientists have given to our current geological epoch, which references the overwhelming influence of human agency on the Earth and its ecological systems. Adopted as a theoretical tool across multiple academic disciplines, social scientists often employ the term to address deep-rooted political and socioeconomic problems and the symptoms of global inequalities and injustices. Meanwhile, legal scholars have employed the term to address the global environmental harms of human agency and to examine how normative frameworks must fundamentally change and adapt to the times ahead. At the same time, recent scholarship also notes that democracies across the globe are experiencing rapid decay, as populist leaders and autocrats are frequently climate change deniers who weaponize social media to spread disinformation. With this scholarship in mind, the Anthropocene has come to represent the convergence of the global environmental and political crises that now confront us.
Within the environmental and political turmoil of the Anthropocene, disinformation in online spaces is a growing cause of concern. The spread of misleading or patently false information about matters such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change poses significant threats to alleviating the harms of each. Indeed, online disinformation undermines public trust in democratic institutions and often adversely affects the already frayed relationship these institutions have with vulnerable populations. Moreover, in a world where communication increasingly happens online, digital disinformation subverts truth and advances the extremist ideas that surge on social media. Yet attempting to mitigate online disinformation implicates concerns over free speech and free association in cyberspace, which in turn affects broader concerns over the sustenance of liberal democracies.
This Article examines online, political disinformation and the corresponding speech issues within the context of the Anthropocene. It asks: If democracies are going to survive the current onslaught of political disinformation in the Anthropocene, how might they adapt? And what will free speech normativity look like in the future? By drawing from the relevant Anthropocene theory across law and the social sciences, and exploring more flexible approaches to free speech norms, it concludes by offering suggestions for mitigating political disinformation and its effects in our current era of global anthropogenic uncertainty.
Recommended Citation
Jeffrey Omari, Political Disinformation in the Anthropocene, 81 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 2027 (2025).Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr/vol81/iss5/6
