How are the digital systems that co-produce and disseminate communication designed? When we consume communication through a digital object, such as a website, how does the visual rhetoric of that website, its user interface, typography, imagery, mediate communication? And, perhaps most pressingly, what is the relationship between design and communication in a world where communication is characterised by mis- and dis-information—a mediasphere of information disorder?

Studying a corpus of ‘post-factual’ websites created between 2015 and 2019, this project employed methods from visual and material culture studies to understand how digital communication is designed and, intentionally or unintentionally, produces, mediates and disseminates mis- and dis-information. The research revealed how technologies of production and dissemination that shape communication are sometimes characterised by sensationalist and propagandistic techniques that can contribute to information disorder. Additionally, these technologies support design forms that can be imbued with content that also exhibits sensationalism and propaganda.

This project began with the hypothesis that there is a relationship between communication design (both discrete objects and technological systems) and information disorder. Information disorder (Wardle and Derakhshan, 2017) is a term that encompasses mis-, dis-, and mal-information, describing both communication itself and the ‘mediasphere’ (Hartley, 1996) in which communication circulates. It is characterised by the circulation of false or misleading information that is sometimes created either for profit or to intentionally cause public harm. As a contemporary phenomenon, information disorder is a threat to democratic political processes and values. Exploring it from a variety of perspectives, including that of design, is imperative to fully grasp how this phenomenon materialises, behaves, and potentially, to develop solutions that reduce its harmful effects.

It also offers a novel perspective by understanding communication as a designed object that can be analysed within frameworks of material culture. These frameworks bring to light the role of (im)materiality in shaping how online communication is produced, disseminated and mediated, arguing that types of communication manipulation that contribute to information disorder, including the use of sensationalist and propagandistic techniques, are not only linguistic, but are shaped and supported by designed technologies and visual rhetorics.

Within a broader context of the political economy of communication, the research demonstrated how technologies support economic logics that contribute to information disorder, as well as how visual rhetorics support an ‘aestheticisation of politics’ that glosses political communication with performativity, style and spectacle. The research also raised important questions about the tension between the agency of professional designers, non-professional content creators, and non-human actors in contributing to information disorder. Because information disorder can cause public harm, where human actors implicated in information disorder can practice some agency, do they have an ethical imperative to do so?

Understanding communication design as imbued with its own logics, principles and codes that inform the shaping – and ultimately – interpretation of information, this project uncovers relationships between design and communication in a complex, entropic digital mediasphere.