What Is the Difference Between Misinformation and Disinformation?

Do you know the difference between misinformation and disinformation? The terms may sound similar, but there’s a big difference between the two. It all comes down to intent and deliberateness of action. While misinformation tends to be an innocent mistake, disinformation is the deliberate spreading of falsehood.

Read on to learn more about the difference between misinformation and disinformation.

What Is Misinformation?

Misinformation is information that is incorrect. Typically, it arises when someone misreads, mishears, or misunderstands some information. They then share what they think is accurate information – but is actually inaccurate – with other people. So, like a game of Telephone, what starts off as something perfectly sensible can end up as something utterly wrong.

According to legend (we don’t claim to know the definite origin here, because that seems to have been lost in the mists of time), an old wartime British army message was passed through the communications route and ultimately changed from “Send reinforcements, we’re going to advance” to “Send three and fourpence, we’re going to a dance”!

Misinformation can be spread via any means of communication – print newspapers, social media posts, blogs, photos, videos, broadcast media, and (for the traditionalists among us) face-to-face gossip.

Misinformation Examples

Let’s look at some examples of misinformation that show how easy it is for something incorrect to become a given and be believed unquestioningly.

1. The fitness goal of walking 10,000 steps each day is underpinned by science.
   
   Wrong! This statement has no scientific basis. Ten thousand steps originated as a marketing campaign for a 1960s step counter made by a Japanese clock company. They named it the Manpo-kei, which translates as “10,000 steps meter.” Some sources report that the Japanese written character representing the name looks very much like a person walking. Other sources say that the inventor just liked the sound of the name. So, its origins are not completely clear, which is why we can’t say that either source is the correct one. Nevertheless, many millions of people around the world believe that 10,000 steps a day is a medically backed fitness target.
   
   There’s no malice, no deliberate attempt here by anyone to spread inaccurate information; it just seems that no one ever thought to check.
   
2. Human beings only use about 10% of their brains.
   
   This is another pseudo-scientific piece of misinformation. Again, there’s no basis for this. In fact, by using brain scans, medical science has proved that we use far more than 10% to carry out even the simplest tasks, such as making a fist.
   
3. “Glasgow, the capital of Scotland, which is only a few miles east of Edinburgh, voted categorically against Brexit.”
   
   A third example comes from a podcast about Brexit. When the UK voted to leave the European Union, the presenter stated, “Glasgow, the capital of Scotland, which is only a few miles east of Edinburgh, voted categorically against Brexit.”
   
   This example shows us that the podcaster hadn’t bothered to check their facts. Glasgow isn’t the capital of Scotland (that’s Edinburgh), and Glasgow is west of Edinburgh, not east. They weren’t trying to fool anyone; they just weren’t great at Scottish geography or fact checking.

These examples show us that carelessness, ignorance, and thoughtlessness can lead to the spread of misinformation, and misinformation can lead people to believe something that’s just not true, even if there was no intent to spread falsehood.

What Is Disinformation?

Disinformation is the act of deliberately spreading factually incorrect or out-of-context information with the intent to influence or deceive. Whereas misinformation tends to be accidental, disinformation is usually an orchestrated activity. It’s often designed to scam, influence public opinion, or further a particular goal.

Much like misinformation, disinformation can be spread through any communications channel (e.g., social media posts, print and broadcast media, and blog content).

Disinformation Examples

Disinformation can cause great harm. It’s spread in many ways, including phishing, sock puppets, catfishing, astroturfing, and deep fakes:

• Phishing creates malicious spam via email, text, or phone calls to draw users into accessing websites that can plant viruses or steal identities, usually to commit financial fraud. For instance, cybercriminals may impersonate legitimate organizations like the IRS in an attempt to acquire taxpayers’ personal information. 
• Sock puppets are fake online identities used to influence, deceive, and, increasingly, to drown out genuinely authoritative expert voices. State actors are known to engage in this activity using online bots and trolls. For example, during the 2016 US presidential election, Twitter (as X was then known) found over 50,000 Russian bots spreading malicious content concerning the election.
• Catfishing uses a sock puppet to target individuals on social media. A key example is romance fraud, where someone with a false identity using stolen data and pictures targets someone on a dating site. The relationship usually moves very fast. The catfish will then request increasingly large amounts of money. One woman gave more than $1 million to a romance scammer before realizing the truth. 
• Astroturfing refers to participants pretending to offer grassroots representation, when they’re really trying to subvert other organizations or beliefs by sending out opinions as though from reputable sources. They typically target climate change, religion, and politics. During 2023 and 2024, the UK charity, the National Trust, was subjected to such action by a group opposed to its work in acknowledging historical links with slavery and its promotion of the climate change agenda.
• Deep fake photos and videos are another means by which disinformation is spread. They’re made using AI to create credible fakes of high-profile individuals to spread messages, often of opinions that the real holder of the identity would not hold. BBC Verify, the BBC’s own fact-checking service, has this guide to spotting disinformation, which is already being spread in advance of the 2024 US elections.

How to Combat Misinformation and Disinformation

Here are our top tips for combating misinformation and disinformation:

1. Start from a position of caution. That old saying, “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers,” applies to all forms of media. There’s no need to turn yourself into that person who trusts nothing and nobody, but you should approach any online content with some caution.

2. Apply common sense. Another useful old saying is “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.” So, be wary of offers of freebies and competitions that push you into clicking on links and entering your personal information. Pause and consider whether what you already know about a person or organization lines up with what you’re reading in a social media post about them.

3. Get your information from well-recognized, trusted sources. For example, use the NHS in the UK or a major hospital website in the US to find out about healthy lifestyles rather than an influencer who’s being paid to promote a strange-smelling candle that no science has ever shown helped anyone’s backache.

4. Do your own research. Be aware that fake news often contains just a kernel of truth to hook you in and make the story seem plausible. So, don’t just read and believe the headline. Read deeper and do your own research.

5. Try the triangulation technique. Triangulation is a useful technique where you only decide something is credible once you’ve seen it from three reliable sources. Major news outlets and agencies have staff whose role is fact-checking and questioning what they see, so three of them are unlikely to all be wrong. 

6. Think before you share. Don’t share something unless you’re sure the information is accurate. Sharing isn’t always caring! 

7. Report inaccurate information. Many email providers give users the option to report phishing scams (e.g., Microsoft Outlook and Gmail). Similarly, users can report social media content that goes against a platform’s policies. For instance, you can mark a Facebook post as fake news. 

Summary

In this post, we learned that:

• Misinformation and disinformation are both forms of repeating and spreading false information. 

• Misinformation does not deliberately spread falsehoods but does so out of ignorance, lack of care, or mistaken understanding.

• Disinformation fully intends to influence negatively, to increase hatred, to convince users of untruths, to defraud, and/or to scam.

• Both are forms of fake news and have been responsible for harm. Extremist individuals, groups, and nation states can manipulate users for political, religious, financial, and other gain. 

• Misinformation and disinformation can be guarded against by being cautious and measuring what we see against what we expect, by applying common sense, and by using reputable, reliable sources of information that use fact-checking systems.

How Can I Learn More About Fact-Checking?

Our course, How to Fact-Check, will teach you how to spot misinformation and disinformation and verify digital content. It’s also a great way to kickstart a career as a freelance fact-checker. Try it for free today!