Rachel Kuo, a University of Wisconsin professor who studies and teaches about race, social movements, gender, and technology, has written extensively about how disinformation can’t be disentangled from power, identity, and systemic inequality. These factors affect who spreads disinformation, how they spread it and how salient it will be with different audiences. We talked to her about how disinformation spreads among different identity groups and what people who want to fight conspiracy theories can do to spread accurate information.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.


There have been a lot of conversations online about how Trump won big with young men. Obviously there’s no one reason for that swing, but how much of it do you think was because of the more extreme beliefs permeating groups of men online, specifically this idea that the “manosphere” was emboldened?

One of the ways I try to approach these conversations, especially around online extremism and these kinds of beliefs, is thinking about how the roots of sexism and patriarchy, the roots of white supremacy, are very much embedded in day-to-day culture. Sometimes the focus on this notion of radicalization or extremism tends to then shift – this idea that there are only certain kinds of people that are falling into extreme sexism or an extreme form of white supremacy, which I think detracts from the ways this seeps into the day-to-day culture of society, the ways that the U.S. export of freedom of speech and expression has been built upon a foundation of patriarchy of white supremacy. The kinds of entanglements of racism, sexism, imperialism is what makes up the things that everything is built on. This notion of extremist beliefs permeating society then makes it seem like these are a few bad apples. 

So one of the questions that I often turn to is, if these are extreme beliefs, then what becomes the so-called acceptable norms of sexism and racism? 

As mentioned in the question, there’s no one specific reason for the swing, and I think several of the ways we might think about power and how power operates will speak to this. But I think the “manosphere,” speaks to different fears and anxieties that are rooted in an ongoing investment in patriarchy. They speak to a kind of masculinity that has always been there. In many narratives of the manosphere is this notion of access to women, access to ways that men – especially white men – are uplifted in a gender and racial hierarchy, and desires for a return to that. It’s rooted in a belief that “this is what we have earned. This is what we deserve.” But through the narrative of, “We are losing power, and we need to retain, maintain and get back that power.” Those desires of access to power and maintaining power are often at the core of the ways this information tracks. 

What are your thoughts about how the news media covered disinformation this election cycle? Do you think it’s done a good job of adding historical and cultural context to the conversation, or is it still overly focused on technology? What advice do you have for the people covering disinformation?

It always returns to this question of, how do people have an analysis of power, right? And I think discussions of disinformation, this kind of focus on truth and veracity, misses the notion of how truth and objectivity have been contested. So what is the shared, common ground that people have, and shared narratives people have? I think disinformation mobilizes because it speaks to some aspect of somebody’s truth – whether that is an emotion they feel based on an experience or memory, whether that is a particular perception they have, whether that is a true piece of information that plays on fears. For people covering disinformation, being able to detangle and have that analysis of, what are the intersections of power – whether that’s race, class, gender, ethnicity – that becomes important for journalists, platforms, folks that are very concerned about how we solve the problem of disinformation. Moving past some desire for neutrality becomes really important.

One of the things I’ve said – especially in the context of Asian American diasporic spaces, or in the context of talking about non-English disinformation and different kinds of racial disinformation – are questions of, for example, the common ground. Like, do people believe it’s true that the U.S. was and currently is an empire? Does patriarchy still exist? That is the core of the historical and cultural context to understand the problems of technology, to understand why certain narratives do or don’t track.

What is your advice for dislodging people from conspiracy theories, radical beliefs and disinformation narratives? What can ordinary people do in their lives to spread accurate information in an effective way?

There are a lot of answers to that, but what I can share is a specific project I’ve been working on with community groups. The research project is with the Filipino Young Leaders Program and also the Alliance for Filipino Immigrant Rights and Empowerment in Chicago. One of the things we’re trying to do is use the practice of oral history and conversation as a way to build intergenerational and also cross-diasporic and transnational understanding. One of the ways people talk about how disinformation impacts their everyday lives is often in the most intimate domains, such as with family members – how do you talk to that relative who believes a certain conspiracy, who has a certain belief that is rooted in racism and sexism? I think people also have to do what they can to protect their own hearts and their well-being. The goal, though, of how we’re using oral history is understanding the ways that memory and lived experiences of trauma. This is specifically tied to Asian diasporic communities, where we see the ways lived experiences of trauma can be weaponized to create rips and tension in communities, for people to buy into certain narratives in order to assimilate and survive. We use oral histories as a way to practice a form of nonjudgmental listening and to understand why people might arrive at a particular idea. 

I think it is very difficult to talk to family or loved ones about politics. Also, nobody believes that they consume disinformation or conspiracies. So rather than entering the conversation trying to convince or persuade someone of something else, it begins from a point of, how do I understand where that person comes from? What kinds of things might activate them? Where do they get their information? What enables them to gravitate towards certain narratives? Actually being able to understand those histories begins to open up a different modality of patience of why a relative might disengage from political systems altogether – because they might think the entire system is corrupt. What are the harms and violences they faced at the hands of institutions that might create distrust? 

I know there is a lot of work that’s being done. Speaking from the perspective of someone doing this work, especially in immigrant communities, in communities with different levels of English proficiency, what’s really hard is the English-level dominance, the ways that language and interpretation are not just about linguistic translation, but actually about cultural context. 

It’s hard to begin from a point of trying to spread accurate information or to dislodge people, but I think it requires some level of understanding the other party and taking time to build that. 

At the core, these are questions of organizing: door-to-door work in communities, political education in communities, bringing people to a shared, common ground and shared horizon and shared analysis of power for collective mobilization to a kind of political horizon that actually benefits a more holistic future. It moves people beyond narrow self-interest – that is the work ahead, and it is really hard work. It’s not an easy, quick technical solution. It’s not easy, quick policy reform.

I think often attention has been on how disinformation spreads on social media platforms, the ways it spreads in electoral politics and electoral campaigns. One of the things to really think about is that disinformation has always been there in different ways for people to maintain power. 


Rachel Kuo writes, teaches, and researches race, social movements, and digital technology. She is an assistant professor of gender and women’s studies and Asian American studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her writing on the relationship between collective politics and media and technology has been published in journals such as Political Communication, New Media + Society, and Social Media + Society. She is the research facilitator of the Asian American Disinformation Table, and a founding member and current affiliate of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies, and co-founder of the Asian American Feminist Collective. She has a doctorate and master’s in media, culture, and communication from New York University.