As search and rescue teams in Texas continue to search for those lost in extreme flash floods and communities try to piece together lives, claims quickly spread about what happened and who was to blame.

Many on the left blamed the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Weather Service. On the right, keyboard warriors accused cloud seeding technologies of causing the devastating floods. Others in the community spread news of the miraculous survival of some of those caught in the flood.

These claims and accusations have been called misinformation, commonly understood as “false” or “misleading” information. The floods in Texas have inundated news cycles with a broader discussion of what misinformation is, how it works, and the impacts it can have.

It is not surprising that Americans are........

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