I'm interested if you know of any historical research that talks about this. I can see that as a possible theory, but the counter would be that there's a fundamental difference in the nature of 'information' between now and pre-internet, where the combination of pure bulk of data and targeting means it's much much harder to actually filter than before.

It's difficult to fix this problem by interrogatin the validity of things when consuming the information in order to interrogate it causes you to have an implicit reaction. Consider advertising that operates on raw association, or curating information feeds that are designed to provoke a specific conflict/reward response.