Misinformation vs Disinformation
What is the difference, when does each apply, and can both be at work at once.
Misinformation
False or misleading information spread without the intent to deceive: the forwarded rumor, the wrong figure, the misread study. Distinguished from disinformation by the sender's good faith, not by any difference in the content.
Disinformation
False information spread deliberately to deceive or to cause harm. The intent separates it from misinformation, which is false but spread in good faith, and the falsity separates it from propaganda, which need not be false at all.
The differences
| Misinformation | Disinformation | |
|---|---|---|
| Content | False or misleading. | False or misleading. |
| Intent | None to deceive. The sender believes it, or does not mean harm. | Deliberate. The sender knows, and means to deceive or harm. |
| Typical source | The forwarded rumor, the misread study, the wrong figure repeated in good faith. | A campaign: a state, a company, a political operation, a scammer. |
| Life cycle | The second stage. What disinformation becomes once sincere people pass it on. | The first stage. A few deliberate sources seed what many sincere ones spread. |
| Remedy | Correction can work, because the sender has no stake in the falsehood. | Correction alone rarely works; exposure of the source and its interest is needed. |
| Relation to propaganda | Not propaganda in itself; an error until someone adopts it. | A favored instrument of propaganda, though propaganda can also run on true facts. |
A relative forwards a message saying a hospital is turning away patients, having seen it in a group chat. The hospital is not. The relative believed it and meant to help.
In the 1980s a letter in an Indian newspaper claims the AIDS virus was engineered in an American laboratory. Soviet outlets pick it up as foreign reporting, a pamphlet with a scientific veneer follows, and the story runs for years. The originators knew it was false.
Always, in sequence. The same false claim is disinformation in the mouth of the person who invented it and misinformation in the mouths of the thousand people who passed it on believing it. A campaign needs only a few deliberate sources; the rest of the work is done by sincere people, which is why techniques such as bot amplification and sock puppets exist: to carry a claim across the gap from the few to the many.