misinformation and disinformation

Misinformation is the inadvertent spread of false information without intent to harm, while disinformation is false information designed to mislead others and is deliberately spread with the intent to confuse fact and fiction. Identifying and combating the spread of mis- and disinformation is a major challenge in the increasingly complex information landscape of the 21st century.

What is the difference between misinformation and disinformation?

Misinformation can occur when individuals or organizations unwittingly get the facts wrong. Misinformation often surfaces when a breaking news story is unfolding and details have not yet been confirmed. Another instance of misinformation is when people share false information as a fact without thoroughly checking that the information they are sharing is accurate. In 2018 Dictionary.com deemed misinformation its word of the year. The term was first used in the late 16th century. In his 1756 work, Memoirs of the King of Prussia, Part I, the English critic Samuel Johnson employed the concept in writing about Frederick II, stating that the king had professed himself strongly opposed to the use of torture. However, Johnson suggested that the king was misinformed in accusing the English of still employing torture at that time:

He declares himself with great ardour against the use of torture; and by some misinformation, charges the English that they still retain it.

Misinformation can spread easily despite a lack of malicious intent. A 2018 study of Twitter (now known as X) users by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that false information spreads more quickly than accurate information. Take, for example, a rapidly spreading social media post about a new celebrity couple that is shared repeatedly before being debunked as a rumor, a joke, or gossip. For someone scrolling through an app, a quick “one click” can easily share the false information, unintentionally causing the fake claim to spread like wildfire. Even if the original post or claim is modified, if people have already shared the information in separate posts, the misinformation can be actively and repeatedly spread with no accountability for those sharing the false rumor.

While the consequences of spreading misinformation can have varying degrees of impact, misinformation can lead to decreased trust in all information on the Internet. In turn, this mistrust can erode democratic systems and undermine the news ecosystem. As in the case of the common fable of the “boy who cried wolf,” if people find that the information they consume on a common basis is often false, it will lead them to distrust or not believe crucial and important information that is true.

Unlike misinformation, disinformation is false information that is designed to mislead others and is deliberately spread with the intent to manipulate truth and facts. The term disinformation is derived from the Russian word dezinformácija. The Russian government first began using disinformation as a political tactic with its establishment in 1923 of a special office for the purpose of spreading false propaganda. Disinformation did not appear in English dictionaries until the late 1980s, a few years after the United States began responding to an international disinformation campaign involving a fabricated September 1980 Presidential Review Memorandum on Africa. The false document claimed that America supported the system of apartheid in South Africa and persecuted Black Americans, accusations that U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter could not let stand.

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Everyone is susceptible to disinformation; it is easy to spread disinformation without ill intentions. Unlike misinformation, though, the foundation of disinformation is malicious and deceptive. It is initially shared with the intent to mislead even if those who subsequently share it do so unwittingly. Disinformation is commonly shared in the form of conspiracy theories, manipulated images, and videos or audio clips. Propaganda and disinformation often go hand in hand.

The spread of mis- and disinformation creates challenges for society, including for democracy. Deliberately creating and spreading disinformation has become a key tactic for those who wish to affect elections. Elected officials, political candidates, activists, corporations, and others acting in bad faith for their own interest and gain can use mis- or disinformation. For example, there is a new and widening partisan gap in approval of mail-in and absentee voting, largely driven by misinformation related to the perceived prevalence of voter fraud in the U.S. presidential election of 2020. Some political candidates asserted that elections could not be trusted because of the number of votes supposedly cast on behalf of dead people. A study by Stanford University researchers, however, showed that instances of dead people voting were extremely rare in recent United States elections—a mere 14 possible instances of dead people allegedly voting out of a universe of 4.5 million voters in one state over an eight-year period, or 0.0003 percent, not enough to make any kind of effect on any election outcome. There are now large swaths of the American electorate who do not trust that U.S. elections are free, fair, and secure. Throughout 2020 and 2021, bad actors leveraged these claims to generate campaign funds and interest in future campaigns by connecting past disinformation narratives to new incidents.

Mis- and disinformation about health became a major issue during the COVID-19 pandemic. With many people confused and concerned about the risks related to COVID-19, a relatively small group of people began pushing a wide variety of misinformation about untested cures and treatments and later risks related to the COVID-19 vaccines, as well as disinformation and conspiracy theories about the virus’s origins. These claims circulated widely online before being amplified by mainstream political and cultural commentators around the world. Like many instances of viral misinformation, these groups took advantage of an information vacuum that formed as many governments were still actively working to understand and communicate the disease’s risks.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the agency responsible for coordinating the United States’ response to pandemics and other disease events, acknowledged in its own 2022 internal review that it made messaging missteps that left people feeling “overwhelmed and confused.” One effect of this confusion was a lower likelihood of people getting vaccinated in the United States than in other wealthy countries, leading to deaths that might have been prevented if the misinformation had not spread. A Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) 2023 study found that one-third of COVID-19 deaths in the United States could have been prevented by following public health recommendations. Mis- and disinformation can lead to severe health consequences and even contribute to a higher likelihood of someone dying from a disease, such as COVID-19. This risk is ongoing.

Mis- and disinformation in the 21st century’s increasingly complex information landscape

While not a new problem, the emergence of our hyper-networked media ecosystem has accelerated the spread of mis- and disinformation. Prior to the Internet, mobile technologies, and social media platforms, people often relied on widely trusted sources such as local and regional media, national publications, and nightly broadcast news programs to receive information. Today we are hyperconnected. From Snapchat articles that resemble salacious clickbait content to microblogging posts on X, TikTok videos, and Instagram infographics, anyone with a digital device holds the power to disseminate news and information. When consuming information this way, it can be hard to track claims to their original source or verify whether the information is based on fact.

At the same time, information shared online is often free to consume, unlike fact-based articles and stories that trusted news sources publish. Today people are more reluctant to pay for news, as they can source what they perceive as quality information online. This dynamic has significantly impacted local news outlets—the most trusted source of news across all political affiliations. Partly as a consequence, local news outlets are shutting down, decreasing their workforce, or being bought out by corporate companies.

Bad actors have leveraged this new information ecosystem by deliberately spreading disinformation to influence public opinion regarding vaccines, the COVID-19 pandemic, international affairs, political candidates, U.S. democracy, and other critical topics. These attempts at sowing distrust in our institutions have fueled vaccine hesitancy and skepticism, leading to major public health challenges. Disinformation has contributed to a rise of hate speech and political violence and initiated a revolving cycle of voter challenges and the introduction of voter suppression laws that have made it harder for voters—particularly older voters, voters of color, and voters with disabilities—to participate in democracy.

Some experts have warned that the rampant spread of mis- and disinformation has contributed to what they call a “post-truth” society, defined by Oxford Dictionaries as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” While media literacy skills can help people critically assess the accuracy of information, this influx of false information, matched with cognitive tendencies, is what drives sustainable false narratives. Research in cognitive science shows that when people repeatedly see or hear fabricated information, it can significantly distort their beliefs, even after being debunked. This is especially true if viewers see the information as novel, surprising, unique, or out of the ordinary.

Why people spread mis- and disinformation and why people fall for it

A 2022 Nature Reviews Psychology study, “The Psychological Drivers of Misinformation Belief and Its Resistance to Correction,” found that mental shortcuts, motivated reasoning, and emotional influences allow misinformation to take hold and persist despite counters to its validity. Research also suggests that people latch onto information that aligns with their existing worldview or beliefs, whether or not that information is true. Political partisanship and personal views skew perceptions of what some accept as truth, and our emotions also affect our judgment—both the emotions that a claim evokes and one’s own emotional state when receiving the information. People also sometimes spread mis- and disinformation simply to connect with other people, especially during periods of cognitive decline. Sometimes even the most salacious of untrue statements leads to more clicks and likes online, providing a positive feedback loop for the person spreading the misinformation.

Content including mis- and disinformation that invokes fear, anger, or positive emotions can increase gullibility and belief. This fact explains how the spread and amplification of mis- and disinformation can worsen over time. The algorithms that power social media platforms are designed to generate engagement. When a social media user engages with mis- and disinformation online, social media algorithms may continue to promote similar false narratives to keep the user engaged on its platform. This feedback loop can accelerate the speed at which mis- and disinformation spreads—not just by malign actors or audiences primed for false information but also by individuals and media who inadvertently amplify it in an effort to debunk it.

Provocateurs spread disinformation for different reasons (political, financial, ideological, and so forth), but they share a common goal, which is to see their false narratives reach a wide audience. Oftentimes, this extended reach occurs through mention of the misleading information via the mainstream media. The media’s efforts to expose and counter online mis- and disinformation can end up having the opposite effect—amplifying its reach and adding to its legitimacy. Researchers have found that amplification, or giving any attention to false content, can provide oxygen to the fire of mis- and disinformation. A 2018 Journal of Experimental Psychology study on the “perceived accuracy of fake news” found that even corrections to mis- and disinformation can often fail to fully erase reliance on false information because of continued influence effects. Mis- and disinformation also persist in memory and compete with corrections during reasoning, even when people recall and accept corrections.

Free speech and the liar’s dividend

One of the biggest challenges related to addressing mis- and disinformation is the risks related to people’s right to free speech (or free expression). Another big concern is the phenomenon of the “liar’s dividend,” which is when bad actors use the threat of mis- and disinformation to delegitimize real facts and information.

In the United States, people have a right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Though it is a complicated topic, this right generally allows people to express opinions and ideas, even if they are not true, with very limited government restrictions and exceptions. There have been instances in countries without freedom of speech where governments have used threats of misinformation to retaliate against political opponents. For this reason, many are careful to avoid even the appearance of curtailing someone’s right to free speech so as to not be accused of political interference.

The liar’s dividend refers to cases where people will claim that real information is mis- and disinformation. This approach has the benefit of muddying the waters so that people, especially those who traffic in misinformation, are able to evade or blunt scrutiny embedded in accurate words or actions that are then not believed by others. Here is how it works: in a world in which information can easily be falsified, a politician might claim that they did not do or say what they in fact did or said. The mistrust in the mainstream news media, for instance, allows political actors around the world to evade or blunt legitimate scrutiny of their words, decisions, or actions. The liar’s dividend pays off for those who sow mistrust and then use that same mistrust to their own advantage.

The emerging role of AI and what we can do in response

New tactics are under development to undermine confidence in elections and exploit information gaps using machine learning, a key form of artificial intelligence (AI). While the sharing of false information, regardless of nefarious intent, has always been a part of political campaigns, the rise of AI has allowed for new forms of information manipulation and presents new potential for false claims to mislead voters. One type of artificially generated mis- or disinformation is the deepfake—a picture, video, or audio clip that is created or digitally altered to deceive an audience. The expansion of AI also allows bad actors to refine existing voter suppression tactics, such as mass voter challenges, records requests, and flat-out election denialism. These efforts, particularly as they relate to U.S. democracy, are often aimed at harming communities of color and vulnerable groups, such as older adults and people with disabilities, attempting to scare or dissuade them from voting or tapping into deep political fears and spreading false information about specific candidates to sway their opinion—and, ultimately, their votes. During the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election of 2024, experts and organizations that are focused on protecting voters from disinformation anticipate encountering the same disinformation trends (such as inaccurate polling locations, falsehoods about voting machines and mail-in ballots, and misrepresentation of candidate positions) that were thrust into the mainstream during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. Those experts also warn that the 2024 cycle could see more sophisticated disinformation campaigns and tactics at a much larger scale than in recent elections.

Others are working on long-term efforts to build trust and faith in elections and the general democratic process by developing news and media literacy for students, starting in elementary school and continuing through high school. Efforts that are well underway to develop media literacy standards in schools will help people from a young age learn to flag and address mis- and disinformation. In 2021 Illinois became the first state in the country to require all public high schools to have a news literacy course to ensure that students are equipped to deal with the increasing amount of false or fabricated information online.

• When you see information presented as fact online, always pause to check its veracity.
• If you are not sure whether the information you are seeing is true, look for trusted leaders and national or local news sources to see whether they are reporting or sharing the same information.
• Check the author by doing a quick search to validate his or her credibility and existence. This is especially important when consuming information on X, because the platform has made it more difficult to verify individual profiles and has even removed verification for some—including people, organizations, news sites, and corporate companies—unless they pay to maintain their verification badges.
• If you are still not sure, do not engage or share the content until you receive more information to verify a claim.

Satire is a particularly challenging example of the line between misinformation and legitimate expression. If a posting you read online is too outlandish, it is possible that it is being shared as a joke or commentary. This is common with satire outlets, such as The Onion. While this content is not always considered disinformation, it can still impact perceptions of reality without proper due diligence. Above all, when you see mis- and disinformation, avoid amplifying it. Do not name peddlers of disinformation or use language that furthers their narrative—even in an effort to debunk it. Many people think that resharing a post with disinformation on social media to debunk or counter that false information is helpful, but, in general, that only leads to it being spread further. Instead of sharing false online information, share as much truthful information as you can to drown out the disinformation and fill online data voids.

Misinformation and disinformation in our highly networked world will continue to present challenges in fields as diverse as public health, international relations, and even celebrity culture. These issues raise fundamental questions about people’s right to free expression that must be carefully considered while also addressing the harmful impact that mis- and disinformation have on democracy.