Study Links Misinformation Durability to Moral Plausibility

A qualitative thematic study published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications theorizes misinformation not as a simple cognitive failure, but as morally and affectively meaningful storytelling. The research, led by Diretnan Dikwal-Bot, conceptualizes a “moral economy of misinformation” to explain why false narratives endure in the post-truth era. Rather than viewing falsehood as an epistemic breakdown, the article argues that misinformation acquires symbolic force by affirming identities, resolving grievances, and offering emotionally satisfying interpretations of contested social realities.

The analysis draws on a dataset of 426 posts and comments responding to the viral and largely false Achraf Hakimi divorce narrative. This specific narrative circulated widely across African and diasporic digital platforms in 2023. The study examines how this particular instance of misinformation gained traction, noting that its spread was driven less by factual credibility and more by moral plausibility. The narrative functioned as a parable of masculine foresight and resistance to perceived female financial entitlement, resonating with broader anxieties about divorce, economic vulnerability, and shifting gender relations.

The article identifies three specific mechanisms through which misinformation becomes durable within this moral economy. The first mechanism is value coherence, whereby narratives align with pre-existing moral worldviews.

The second mechanism is affective intensity, through which emotion transforms misinformation into an object of attachment, pleasure, and identification.

The third mechanism involves premediated scripts, which render stories legible in advance of verification by activating familiar cultural templates of grievance, entitlement, and moral retribution.

The study further argues that these dynamics are intensified by platform infrastructures, including algorithms, influencer economies, meme cultures, and short-form video. These digital environments privilege emotionally charged and morally legible content over empirical accuracy.

By bringing moral economy theory into dialogue with feminist media studies, affect theory, and digital sociology, the article develops a framework for explaining why misinformation can remain socially persuasive even after factual correction. The research suggests that when a narrative continues to satisfy moral expectations and affective investments, its social power persists regardless of its factual status.

The article concludes that post-truth culture is less a collapse of truth than a struggle over which truths become morally persuasive in digital spaces.

Subject of Research: Qualitative analysis of the moral and affective mechanisms sustaining misinformation durability in digital spaces.

Article Title: More than falsehood: conceptualising ‘the moral economy of misinformation’ in the post-truth era

Article References: Dikwal-Bot, D. (2026). More than falsehood: conceptualising ‘the moral economy of misinformation’ in the post-truth era. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-09591-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-026-09591-w

Keywords: misinformation, moral economy, digital sociology, affect theory, feminist media studies, post-truth, qualitative research, social media, narrative analysis, African diaspora, than, falsehood