Debates about misinformation and countermeasures are often driven by dramatic analogies, such as “infodemic” or “information warfare”.

While useful shortcuts to interference, these analogies obscure the complex system through which misinformation propagates, leaving perceptual gaps where solutions lie unseen.

We present a new framework of the complex multilevel system through which misinformation propagates and show how popular analogies fail to account for this complexity.

We discuss implications for policy making and future research.

L. Frischlich, H. Olsson, A. Roy, H. Schulze, S. Rhodes, A. Mansheim, The complexity of misinformation extends beyond virus and warfare analogies, npj Complexity 2(1) (2025) 29.