Information Disorder:
Disinformation, Misinformation and Malinformation
The most common question, when it comes to information disorder is "What's the difference between disinformation and misinformation?". To know the difference, we need to understand the three main types of information disorder.
Three main types of information disorder:
Disinformation
Misinformation
Malinformation
Key factors are intent (whether the information is deliberately used to mislead the victim or not) and truthfulness (whether the information is true or false).
Disinformation
The concept of information disorder describes different situations in which information is manipulated or misused.
The first and most known case of information disorder is disinformation, which is false or misleading content that is deliberately created and spread with an intention to deceive or secure political gain. It may cause harm to individuals, groups, organizations, and countries.
Disinformation usually uses a mixture of truth and fiction.
It incorporates tiny 'crumbles' of truth into the falsehood to manipulate and confuse one's sense of what is really happening.
Organized and complex disinformation activities are usually defined as campaigns or operations.
Disinformation Example: an image was shared on social media, allegedly showing a kid in war-torn Aleppo, but it was actually taken from a 2014 music video published on YouTube.
Source: Asa Winstanley on Twitter, 2016
Disinformation Example: The picture on the left was widely circulated on Facebook and Twitter in 2014, claiming it was from the war in Syria, but actually it was from an art project in Saudi Arabia.
Source: Photo credit Abdul Aziz al Otaibi
Based on the intent of the spreader, the same misleading content can be categorised as disinformation but also as misinformation. So, what is misinformation?
Misinformation
Misinformation can be even more harmful and dangerous than pure disinformation, because false or misleading news is mistakenly reported by trusted media that the public tends to consider reliable and trustworthy, or by popular social media accounts.
When misinformation concerns serious topics such as politics, wars, and social issues, it can influence and manipulate the perception of the public opinion in a certain direction.
Misinformation Example:
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In 2022, some Italian TV programmes showed a picture allegedly revealing underground secret labs beneath the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, during the Russian siege.
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The picture had been initially shared on Facebook by the Russian politician Sergey Markov.
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It turned out to be a fictitious image taken from the 2015 board game “Blackout”, but part of the public opinion was convinced by mainstream media about this conspiracy theory.
Source: Screenshot from tv show Piazzapulita, La 7 channel, 2022
Malinformation
Malinformation is genuine information manipulated and used with the intent to harm and damage the reputation of the victim in the public opinion.
It employs leaked or actual information out of context by changing the date or location of a photo, exaggerating the scale and impact of an actual fact or phenomenon.
Examples:
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Leaks
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Doxing
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Outing
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Selective quotes
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Photo cropping
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Video editing
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Revenge porn
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CCTV footage
Source: Credit AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye.
Disinformation has already become a major challenge, even for the most powerful countries and organizations, including our allies – the United States, European Union and NATO. However, a reluctant approach to disinformation has already impacted the election results of several countries (such as the USA and the UK), has cost billions of euros and has even created preconditions for strengthening the overall social climate of insecurity.
According to the 2019 report by researchers at Oxford University, the number of countries with political disinformation campaigns more than doubled to 70 in the last two years, with evidence of at least one political party or government entity in each of those countries engaging in social media manipulation. Speaking of social media, a study conducted by MIT in 2018 has shown that disinformation travels on Twitter six times faster than facts. Why so? Because most of the time you don't even need people.
Automated fake accounts on social media, known as bots, are used to spread false narratives creating a buzz around a particular topic and thus luring real people into reading made up information. Bots are not intrinsically bad - it just depends who uses them and what for.
The 2016 U.S. presidential election became a text-book example of using troll farms for influence operations with St. Petersburg based Internet Research Agency (IRA) being the most prominent one. Researchers from University of Nebraska broke out a variety of key tactics used by the IRA to target audiences in the United states - for example, the Facebook and Instagram ads, which were run by both Right and Left-leaning pages, as well as Black community-targeted pages, reinforced themes and messages to clearly-defined audiences.
In the Baltic region, the biggest threat is posed by Russian state media outlets (such as Sputnik, RT, Rubaltic) and fringe media in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland, which tends to amplify pro-Kremlin messages in local languages.
Disinformation efforts coming out of countries such as Russia, China, and Iran are recognized as the biggest threats to national security by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, European Union, United Kingdom. In the Baltic countries, Russia and China were defined as the biggest threats to national security by Lithuanian State Security Department - not only in the region, but also globally.
Informational warfare shifts from national governments to the black market - with the tools available, basically anybody can organize a disinformation campaign. Research concluded by Recorded Future suggests that “disinformation as a service” is publicly available on criminal forums, is highly customisable and costs from 15 to couple of thousand dollars.