

I argue that information-centered advocacy may be the most effective means of closing the justice gap. This information gap can be remedied by increasing public education on these topics and by improving the means of seeking legal assistance. Recent data from the Legal Services Corporation and the University of Chicago confirm that this gap primarily stems from a lack of information about legal rights, remedies, and resources. The justice gap-the gap between people’s legal needs and the legal services available-is wide and growing. There is a crisis in access to justice in the United States. This Essay therefore recommends that we must build a realistic theory-based on observations as well as interdisciplinary insights-to explain the governance of private companies who maintain our public sphere in the internet era. And yet, too often we analyze the problem of fake news by focusing on individual instances, not systemic features of the information economy. This is a different conception of fake news, and it presents a question about how information operates at scale in the internet era. Instead, what we are really focusing on is why we have been suddenly inundated by false information-purposefully deployed-that spreads so quickly and persuades so effectively. When we agonize over the fake news phenomenon, though, we are not talking about these kinds of fabricated stories.

Despite the common use of the term, it eludes common definition. presidential election, “fake news” has dominated popular dialogue and is increasingly perceived as a unique threat to an informed democracy.
