Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinformation: An Informational Guide

What is "fake news"?

You've probably heard the term "fake news", probably in relation to the news media. But what does it mean?

This term is often used to refer to anything from news stories with clickbait titles; to that one article from The Onion that hit a little too close to home; to an opinion expressed by a politician your cousin on Facebook can't stand. Do these all count as "fake news"?

For the sake of this guide, we'll define "fake news" as the seven categories in the below infographic:

Source: Fake news. It's complicated. by Claire Wardle of FirstDraft.

From the rest of the web:

"In its purest form, fake news is completely made up, manipulated to resemble credible journalism and attract maximum attention and, with it, advertising revenue...the definition is often expanded to include websites that circulate distorted, decontextualised or dubious information through - for example - clickbaiting headlines that don't reflect the facts of the story, or undeclared bias." - What is fake news? How to spot it and what you can do to stop it by Elle Hunt of The Guardian

"The term 'fake news' has emerged as a catch-all phrase to refer to everything from news articles that are factually incorrect to opinion pieces, parodies and sarcasm, hoaxes, rumors, memes, online abuse, and factual misstatements by public figures that are reported in otherwise accurate news pieces." - Facebook's Information and Operations report (PDF) by Jen Weedon, William Nuland, and Alex Stamos

Keep in mind: "fake news" is a catch-all term.

While "fake news" is an effective descriptor for the various ways that misleading or incorrect information is presented, it's a colloquial term that carries a lot of socially-charged and politically-charged meaning. That, and it doesn't specify how the information itself is incorrect. There are other terms used to better identify this concept, and those terms are misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.

• misinformation: The action of misinforming someone; the condition of being misinformed. Wrong or misleading information. ("misinformation, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, June 2022, www.oed.com/view/Entry/119699. Accessed 3 August 2022.)
• disinformation: The dissemination of deliberately false information, esp. when supplied by a government or its agent to a foreign power or to the media, with the intention of influencing the policies or opinions of those who receive it; false information so supplied. ("disinformation, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, June 2022, www.oed.com/view/Entry/54579. Accessed 3 August 2022.)
• malinformation: The sharing of information that is "is based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate" (Mis, dis, malinformation. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). (n.d.). Retrieved January 25, 2023, from https://www.cisa.gov/mdm). Further, "Malinformation often combines misinformation and disinformation to generate an entirely new supposition, creating mental whiplash as the content consumer ingests factual information that, perhaps, they already knew to be true and then continues reading the additional information that surrounds that fact but is false." (Affelt, A. (2022, 09). A KERNEL OF TRUTH IN IT: Malinformation moves to the forefront of fake news. Information Today, 39, 29-31. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/magazines/kernel-truth-malinformation-moves-forefront-fake/docview/2709767016/se-2)

What are the differences between misinformation and disinformation?

Although both types of "fake news" are sharing incorrect information, misinformation is typically not intentionally misleading - the facts presented are, for whatever reason, just wrong. Disinformation, however, is presented in regards to a specific agenda. Its priority is to convince the viewer to subscribe to that agenda, regardless of whether or not the information it's providing is factually accurate.

To view a helpful resource related to this concept, click here to see a LibGuide created by Wayne State University.

Source: IFLA's How to Spot Fake News webpage (the infographic is also available there in multiple languages)