Once a site of what many considered to be utopic potential, the primacy of social media platforms on the internet has rapidly turned it into a ready vehicle for disinformation. The film examines how the convergence of rising inequality, our increasing reliance on the online world, combined with new tools for manipulation, has enabled the creation of parallel realities with dramatic social consequences. People living within the same community can now perceive the world in vastly different ways, depending on where they hang out online. The power to manipulate narratives and herd people toward falsehood raises the stakes so high that peace and cooperation are becoming increasingly fragile, the goal of disinformation.

Manufacturing Chaos reveals how similar ideas, words, and memes are being employed to draw people towards white-nationalism across the world as algorithms are primed to push conflict in order to increase screen time. The disinformation specialists featured in the documentary offer a historical perspective on the rise of such movements, how the increasing privatization of the commons has led to a resurgence of far-right ideologies, and stress the need for a unified global response.