Information hazing is the use of information to directly and indirectly harass and/or exclude newcomers. This is common in spaces with strong social cohesion where the dominant group is wary of accepting individuals who do vary from the group. The tech industry and its pipeline, computer science education, are two places where the lack of diverse and varied voices has led to numerous social harms. We have collected 30 syllabi from CS1 courses across the US to explore how the courses governing documents, and syllabi, curate the computer science education knowledge commons. Our evaluation highlights areas of policy, research, and student perspectives that are out of alignment both with practice in academia and industry standards. Requirements stemming from the expectation of independent assessment within the academic environment versus the common practice of open information and collaboration appear to clash within the academic integrity policies of many computer science courses. These competing priorities create opportunities for undue harm that create a fertile ground for the spread of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. These are usually the unanticipated consequences of policies written in good faith, but still exhibit the toxic, stressful, and isolating impacts of hazing.

Misinformation has shown itself in recent years to be an incredibly complicated and thorny societal problem. While most academic work on the subject looks at the largest and scariest examples of misinformation, it largely ignores the fundamental reality that to misinform is to be an imperfect person also known as a human. In this Introduction to the edited volume, Governing Misinformation in Everyday Knowledge Commons, the editors briefly explain the three scholarly traditions (The Everyday, Misinformation, and Governing Knowledge Commons) that are the nexus of each chapter in this tome. We also present several illustrative examples to highlight the thesis of this work, that misinformation is incredibly commonÊand only through addressing the context and risk around it can we create nuanced and culturally specific solutions.

Misinformation is ubiquitous in everyday life and exists on spectrum from innocuous to harmful. Communities manage issues of credibility, trust, and information quality continuously, so as to to mitigate the impact of misinformation when possible and evolve social norms and intentional governance to delineate between problematic disinformation and little white lies. Such coproduction of governance and (mis-)information raises a complex set of ethical, economic, political, social, and technological questions that requires systematic study and careful deliberation. The Conclusion discusses key themes across chapters in this volume, as well as connections to emergent themes from other books in this series, considering implications for future research, everyday life, and the governing knowledge commons framework.