Disinformation has consolidated as a complex contemporary phenomenon. However, its academic study often remains fragmented, with research focusing on isolated aspects such as content or network structures while neglecting the political and economic incentives that sustain the system. This methodological fragmentation highlights a significant gap. To address this, this paper introduces the "Hexagon of Disinformation," a theoretical-methodological framework designed to guide the systemic and integrated empirical analysis of disinformation.

The model is structured into six interconnected and interdependent dimensions: material, social, technological, economical, political, and institutional. Theoretically, the framework is grounded in an articulation of Fairclough's (1992, 2015) theory of discourse as social practice and Recuero's (2024) systemic perspective. This approach conceptualizes disinformation not as simple "false content," but as a discursive action embedded in power struggles and as a complex system analyzable as an object, process, and effect.

The framework’s primary contribution is its systemic nature, inviting researchers to investigate the relationships of interdependence between the dimensions. The paper details each dimension, including the material (linguistic strategies), social (group dynamics), technological (platforms, algorithms), economical (monetization), political (polarization, populism), and institutional (attacks on public trust). The value of the Hexagon lies in analyzing the connections between these porous dimensions. By emphasizing interconnectedness, the framework offers a versatile tool for a more holistic understanding of the disinformation ecosystem.

Digital media scholarship has often attempted to determine the role of social media technologies, such as news feed algorithms, in promoting disinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories. But as Daniel Kreiss has argued, this work can make the mistake of privileging “the analysis of media problems over political ones,” leading to an approach that risks becoming “deeply presentist.” On the other hand, work that has examined the political and historical dimensions of disinformation and propaganda has tended to minimize the role of the internet and other technologies in these phenomena.

In this paper, I challenge both of these approaches by unearthing a specific history of right-wing digital technology usage in the 1990s. I show how a group of elite conservative activists came to see networked digital technologies as a route to waging a “war of ideas” against mass media and public schools. Throughout the decade, they launched experiments through Compuserve, satellite broadcasting, and the early World Wide Web, making use of the specific affordances of each. In the process, they helped build out a networked infrastructure of conservative ideas. By the end of the decade, digital media sources were filled with accounts challenging scientific consensus on issues ranging from evolution to global warming to the gender wage gap. Ultimately, this history sheds light on the nature of online disinformation, suggesting that political and technological factors have played an important role in shaping the current ecosystem--and that our current definitions of "disinformation" remain limited.

This paper examines the implications of the Twitter Files Brazil (TFB) controversy for the debate on platform governance, focusing on issues of transparency, moderation, and sovereignty. How has the TFB case contributed to the political manipulation of platform governance and accountability? The study combines network analysis of posts from April 2024 and historical data to map accounts early flagged for coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) and analyze the spread of disinformation on the platform. We also analysed the top shared posts to identify disinformation claims. Our findings reveal a polarized network, split into two distinct communities: one led by far-right U.S. and Brazilian far-right and the other by Brazilian progressive influencers. It highlights the role of far-right leaders in Brazil, who leveraged accusations against the Brazilian government to delegitimize national institutions, particularly the Supreme Court. 30.34% of the accounts engaged on sharings were previously flagged for CIB. We argue that these dynamics reflect a broader pattern of platform selective transparency, which contributes to weaponize opacity and undermine democratic digital governance. The lack of transparency hides that, beyond the legal requests for platform data and moderation, X actively arbitrates removals and boosts without accountability, including falsehoods driven by political propaganda. The study highlights how digital platforms, particularly in the Global South, play a crucial role in the international spread of disinformation, linking it to critiques of digital colonialism.