Identifying Misinformation: Definitions

Definitions

There are no universally agreed-upon definitions of misinformation and disinformation, but this is how the terms are used on this Web site:

Disinformation refers to false or misleading information that is deliberately spread by a government, organized political group, an individual or other entity. The issue of intent is key; if the intent is to spread false or misleading information, it is disinformation

Misinformation refers to false or misleading information that is spread unintentionally. If one unwittingly spreads false or misleading information, that is misinformation. Of course, many times it is impossible to ascertain intentions, so it may not be clear whether false information represents disinformation or misinformation.

Misinformation can be further subdivided into:

Media Mistakes which happen frequently given the pressure of deadlines and imperfect knowledge

Urban Legends -- Untrue stories that are widely believed because they speak to a widespread fear, hope, or other emotion

Conspiracy Theories -- Belief that powerful, evil hidden forces are secretly manipulating the course of world events and history.

Some examples may make the definitions clearer.

Disinformation: The USSR's disinformation campaign on AIDS is the classic example. The Soviet intelligence and security service, the KGB, had a special service, Service A, for spreading false information. For example, soon after AIDS was recognized as a new disease, Service A concocted the story that the AIDS virus had been developed as a biological weapon by the Pentagon at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and was used in experiments on prisoners, which was allegedly why it initially appeared in New York, described as the largest big city near Fort Detrick. Several major U.S. cities are actually much closer to Fort Detrick than New York, including Washington, DC, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, but few non-Americans realize that.

On March 17, 1992, Yevgeniy Primakov, who was then head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, a successor of the KGB, admitted that "the articles exposing U.S. scientists ‘crafty' plot against mankind [in allegedly manufacturing AIDS] were fabricated in KGB offices," as reported in the March 19, 1992 issue of the Russian newspaper Izvestiya. The Soviets knew the allegations were false, but spread them as part of their policy of spreading vicious lies about the United States. This is disinformation.

Media Mistakes: On December 6, 2001, the leading French newspaper Le Monde published an article stating that Hamid Karzai, who later became the head of Afghanistan's provisional government and then president of Afghanistan, had "acted, for while, as a consultant for the American oil company Unocal, at the time it was considering building a pipeline in Afghanistan." This statement is not true. Unocal spokesman Barry Lane stated that an exhaustive search of all the company's records made it clear that Mr. Kazrzai was "never a consultant, never an employee" of Unocal. This initial mistake by Le Monde has been repeated numerous times by other publications and websites, spreading the misinformation.

Urban Legends: One classic urban legend is the so-called "baby parts" myth. The false allegation is that Americans or others are kidnapping or adopting children from Latin America or other regions to use in organ transplants. This totally untrue story started as a word-of-mouth rumor, broke into the media in 1987 in Guatemala, and has circulated widely ever since. Media accounts giving credence to this false allegation won the most prestigious journalism prizes in France in 1995 and in Spain in 1996. The origins of this rumor and its spread in the world media are examined in the United States Information Agency report, The Child Organ Trafficking Rumor: a Modern "Urban Legend," which was submitted to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography in December 1994.

The "baby parts" myth was spurned by advances in organ transplantation that made organ theft seem more plausible to some. Other advances in technology have led to similar urban legends. When microwave ovens were first introduced, apprehensions about possible health effects of this new technology gave rise to the story about the person who tried to dry their wet cat or dog in the microwave, only to have it explode. Urban legends give a narrative, story form to widespread hopes and fears, which is why they are widely believed. For example, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, an urban legend arose that someone had survived the World Trade Center collapse by "surfing" a piece of concrete down from the 80th floor to the ground. No such event occurred, but this false report circulated, reflecting the hope that some of the people trapped high in the towers could have miraculously survived their collapse.

Conspiracy Theories: Conspiracy theories are similar to urban legends, but center around the idea that powerful, evil hidden forces are secretly manipulating the course of world events and history and that nothing is as it seems. The book 9/11: The big lie by French author Thierry Meyssan (published as L'Effroyable Imposture ("The Horrifying Fraud") in French) is an example of conspiracy thinking. Meyssan suggests that no plane hit the Pentagon on September 11 and that, instead, a cabal of conspirators within the U.S. government attacked the Pentagon with a cruise missile with a depleted uranium warhead in order to manufacture an excuse for greater defense spending and war against the Taliban. Meyysan did not interview or credit the eyewitnesses to the September 11 events, who reported seeing a plane strike the Pentagon, and he offers no explanation for what happened to American Airlines flight #77 and its 64 passengers and crew, but inconvenient facts such as these are regularly ignored or dismissed by conspiracy theories in favor of extraordinarily complex and convoluted conspiracies, for which there is no evidence, merely uninformed speculation. Nevertheless, by blaming powerful alleged villains, conspiracy theories find a wide audience for whom suspicions are much more powerful in forming beliefs than logic, reason, or facts.