What is Disinformation?

Disinformation is false or misleading content that spreads as if it were true. It doesn’t refer only to content that has been completely fabricated, but also information that mixes truths and lies, such as real data presented to mislead or that has been misinterpreted; claims taken out of context that completely change their original meaning; or statements that omit key information to understand what really happened. Whether it is something completely fabricated or partially true, the result remains the same: content that confuses, misleads or installs false ideas.

There are different motives behind the emergence and spread of disinformation, ranging from those who create it for specific purposes like political or economic gain (see here for more details), to those who share it because they find it valuable and believe it to be true.

Although we normally associate it with social media, disinformation is also spread through political speeches, traditional media outlets and messaging apps like WhatsApp or Telegram, and it is also replicated in daily conversations. 

The term “disinformation” refers to the content itself and the wider phenomenon that includes its spread, motives and effects.

Misinformation or Disinformation? 

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These are two different concepts.

• Misinformation: false content that is shared without knowing it is incorrect.
• Disinformation: false content created or spread deliberately, with the intention of misleading, obtaining political or economic gain or causing harm.

This distinction arises to highlight the complexity of the phenomenon and the need for different approaches to understand it and mitigate it. Although it is recommended to investigate and expose malicious stakeholders, a different approach is required to address people who share content by mistake: offering reliable information and tools to help them avoid falling for false information again.

Even though this difference can be useful for analysis, in practice it can be difficult — or downright impossible — to determine the motives of the people sharing the content. Besides, the same content can be born as disinformation (for example, to smear a politician) and then spread as misinformation, when thousands of people share it believing it is true. Therefore, we use the term “disinformation” for both situations.

Why We Don’t Use “Fake News”

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The term “fake news” became popular to refer to disinformation, but it can lead to mistakes if we use it as synonym of the phenomenon or disinformation content.

The main reason is simple: not all disinformation is in the form of news or meets journalistic criteria, so calling it “fake news” can cause confusion and make it difficult to identify disinformation as such. Many public figures also use the term to disqualify true information that is not convenient for them. That made it imprecise and, often times, tuned it into a political weapon.

That is why, even if we acknowledge that “fake news” is the most widely used term among the general public, we prefer to talk about “disinformation,” which is a broader and more precise concept to describe this complex phenomenon.