The Routledge Companion to Media Disinformation and Populism

This companion addresses one of the most important and underexamined structural questions in the disinformation field: what is the relationship between populism and disinformation? The two phenomena are frequently co-present, but the nature of the connection — whether populism creates the conditions for disinformation to thrive, or whether disinformation is a constitutive element of populist politics — is contested. Tumber and Waisbord assemble more than fifty contributions that approach the question from journalism studies, political communication, sociology, and international relations.

The collection is global in scope, examining media systems and political contexts across Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. That comparative dimension is particularly valuable: it prevents the kind of US-centric or Western-centric analysis that distorts much disinformation research. The handbook is also notably even-handed on the analytical debates — including whether 'fake news' as a category is analytically useful, and how to distinguish disinformation from legitimate political contestation. For researchers and practitioners needing a comprehensive theoretical grounding in the media-populism-disinformation nexus, this is the standard reference.