Recently, the two words misinformation and disinformation have been used to convey a specific narrative or not convey a specific narrative.
Here is a definition of the two words from an ex-CIA agent.
Misinformation can be when someone gets things wrong, it’s false information. And sometimes it’s being shared with that purpose. Most often it’s not, but there’s not necessarily malicious intent in sharing misinformation. And most often when misinformation has been shared by credible people, they correct it. And that’s important, that people correct the misinformation that they might have spread unknowingly.
Disinformation is when you have false information sprinkled with some true information to create a narrative to cause people to commit a certain action. With disinformation, there’s almost always malicious intent and there’s a motivation behind that, and that’s really key and important, and that’s why it’s very hard to discern what disinformation is because you have to identify what that intent or that motivation is, not what you assume or project that intent or motivation to be.
And so what you’ll see nowadays, in this politically charged environment we live in (2022), is people deciding that a certain government institution is dispelling disinformation in order to discredit that institution.
I’ll end with a quote by former KGB chair Yuri Andropov, “Disinformation is like cocaine. You take it once or twice and you’re going to be okay. But if you take it all the time, you are a changed person.” Sit with that when you think about Fox News and its ilk.