The challenge of false information is spreading in today's digital world and affecting the public in every possible way. The public receives and believes all sorts of false information, some of which can indeed shape perceptions and even influence major societal events like elections. False information has several different forms, and it might be more useful for us to think about it as taking on a few key appearances, each with its unique set of characteristics. We might call these appearances disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation.
False information that is created and spread with the intent to mislead and manipulate is known as disinformation. This is not done by accident but is a strategy. Disinformation works best when it's used to "sway public opinion through false narratives and misleading information." A prime example of this is the Hunter Biden laptop story from October 2020. In this instance, while the New York Post was publishing emails that were supposedly suggesting some influence peddling, a lot of critics were saying that what was really going on was that media outlets and social platforms were almost immediately labeling the story as disinformation. Whether you agree with the story or not, disinformation accomplishes what it set out to do in this instance: to control the public conversation. Online, disinformation prospers because it's meant to do one thing and do it well which is to provoke. It extracts and intensifies emotions of fear and anger that make our digital public square a little more unhealthy, and it gets us just a bit closer to home as a society.
Misinformation is not by design, it's false information shared unknowingly. It's all too often leading to widespread confusion. It is described as "unknowingly spreading false information that is teaching the public to be confused." It's a confusing definition with some pretty clear, if not flattering, descriptors. Misinformation might lie in its appearing to be harmless, but because it doesn't seem at all sinister, it skips by most people undetected, winning a moment's worth of shares before anyone gets around to checking whether it's actually true. This apparent nature of misinformation speaks to its effectiveness as a tool for amplifying confusion in our online world, where sharing is still the only way to be heard, and where being heard more often than not also means being believed.
Malinformation is information often used to harm or mislead specific targets. Defined as a "strategy using information to harm or mislead," it is something we don't usually think about when we consider harmful information. Imagine a misleading story about a public figure that gets a lot of attention. Now, imagine that story being used as a weapon against that public figure in a certain context. That's malinformation. This kind of false information is especially harmful because it combines fact with malice. Manipulation of information, which is crucial for understanding how malinformation affects us. It shifts perceptions by playing off our trust in partial truths. This makes it prime for political or corporate use, where the goal isn't just to confuse but to ruin. And because it's so well-suited to "the digital space," it can spread through online echo chambers faster than we can hit the "share" button.
Disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation are not simply terms, they are active forces in our world today, shaping events and influencing people. Governments are using false information to build censorship justification narratives. In extreme cases, they frame laws to target "fake news" that sometimes serves as a cover for legitimate dissent critical of the government. This balancing act between harm reduction and free speech is a significant current issue. However, understanding these categories of harmful information offers sneak peeks through the onslaught of narrative information. Knowledge of these three can only encourage us to learn more about what is being done to us.
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