Disinformation


Disinformation is false or misleading information deliberately spread to deceive people, or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic deceptions and media manipulation tactics to advance political, military, or commercial goals. Disinformation is implemented through coordinated campaigns that "weaponize multiple rhetorical strategies and forms of knowing—including not only falsehoods but also truths, half-truths, and value judgements—to exploit and amplify culture wars and other identity-driven controversies."
In contrast, misinformation refers to inaccuracies that stem from inadvertent error. Misinformation can be used to create disinformation when known misinformation is purposefully and intentionally disseminated. "Fake news" has sometimes been categorized as a type of disinformation, but scholars have advised not using these two terms interchangeably or using "fake news" altogether in academic writing since politicians have weaponized it to describe any unfavorable news coverage or information.

Etymology

The English word disinformation comes from the application of the Latin prefix dis- to information making the meaning "reversal or removal of information". The rarely used word had appeared with this usage in print at least as far back as 1887. Some consider it a loan translation of the Russian дезинформация, transliterated as dezinformatsiya, apparently derived from the title of a KGB black propaganda department. Soviet planners in the 1950s defined disinformation as "dissemination of false reports intended to mislead public opinion."
Disinformation first made an appearance in dictionaries in 1985, specifically, Webster's New College Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary. In 1986, the term disinformation was not defined in Webster's New World Thesaurus or New Encyclopædia Britannica. After the Soviet term became widely known in the 1980s, native speakers of English broadened the term as "any government communication containing intentionally false and misleading material, often combined selectively with true information, which seeks to mislead and manipulate either elites or a mass audience."
By 1990, use of the term disinformation had fully established itself in the English language within the lexicon of politics. By 2001, the term disinformation had come to be known as simply a more civil phrase for saying someone was lying. Stanley B. Cunningham wrote in his 2002 book The Idea of Propaganda that disinformation had become pervasively used as a synonym for propaganda.

Operationalization

The Shorenstein Center at Harvard University defines disinformation research as an academic field that studies "the spread and impacts of misinformation, disinformation, and media manipulation", including "how it spreads through online and offline channels, and why people are susceptible to believing bad information, and successful strategies for mitigating its impact". According to a 2023 research article published in New Media & Society, disinformation circulates on social media through deception campaigns implemented in multiple ways including: astroturfing, conspiracy theories, clickbait, culture wars, echo chambers, hoaxes, fake news, propaganda, pseudoscience, and rumors.
In order to distinguish between similar terms, including misinformation and malinformation, scholars collectively agree on the definitions for each term as follows: disinformation is the strategic dissemination of false information with the intention to cause public harm; misinformation represents the unintentional spread of false information; and malinformation is factual information disseminated with the intention to cause harm, these terms are abbreviated 'DMMI'.
In 2019, Camille François devised the "ABC" framework of understanding different modalities of online disinformation:
In 2020, the Brookings Institution proposed amending this framework to include Distribution, defined by the "technical protocols that enable, constrain, and shape user behavior in a virtual space". Similarly, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace proposed adding Degree and Effect.

Comparisons with propaganda

Whether and to what degree disinformation and propaganda overlap is subject to debate. Some define propaganda as the use of non-rational arguments to either advance or undermine a political ideal, and use disinformation as an alternative name for undermining propaganda, while others consider them to be separate concepts altogether. One popular distinction holds that disinformation also describes politically motivated messaging designed explicitly to engender public cynicism, uncertainty, apathy, distrust, and paranoia, all of which disincentivize citizen engagement and mobilization for social or political change.

Practice

Disinformation is the label often given to foreign information manipulation and interference. Studies on disinformation are often concerned with the content of activity whereas the broader concept of FIMI is more concerned with the "behaviour of an actor" that is described through the military doctrine concept of tactics, techniques, and procedures.
Disinformation is primarily carried out by government intelligence agencies, but has also been used by non-governmental organizations and businesses. Front groups are a form of disinformation, as they mislead the public about their true objectives and who their controllers are. Most recently, disinformation has been deliberately spread through social media in the form of "fake news", disinformation masked as legitimate news articles and meant to mislead readers or viewers. Disinformation may include distribution of forged documents, manuscripts, and photographs, or spreading dangerous rumours and fabricated intelligence. Use of these tactics can lead to blowback, however, causing such unintended consequences such as defamation lawsuits or damage to the dis-informer's reputation.
Disinformation can spread with greater ease in situations where there is a lack of credible information on a topic, such as a crisis. The implications of this were seen after the 2024 Southport stabbings, where the spread of disinformation regarding the killer's background was fuelled by reporting restrictions, meaning that there were no facts to counter the disinformation. This then led to the 2024 United Kingdom riots.

Worldwide

Disinformation is recognised as a significant global challenge, affecting democracies and other political systems by undermining public trust and fragmenting the factual basis for public debate. It often spreads rapidly online — frequently outpacing accurate information — and contributes to political polarisation; empirical research also links disinformation to democratic erosion and to regime resilience in authoritarian contexts.

Soviet disinformation

Russian disinformation

Chinese disinformation

American disinformation

The United States Intelligence Community appropriated use of the term disinformation in the 1950s from the Russian dezinformatsiya, and began to use similar strategies, starting during Cold War, and in conflict with other nations. The New York Times reported in 2000 that during the CIA's effort to substitute Mohammed Reza Pahlavi for then-Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mossadegh, the CIA placed fictitious stories in the local newspaper. Reuters documented how, subsequent to the 1979 Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan during the Soviet–Afghan War, the CIA put false articles in newspapers of Islamic-majority countries, inaccurately stating that Soviet embassies had "invasion day celebrations". Reuters noted a former U.S. intelligence officer said they would attempt to gain the confidence of reporters and use them as secret agents, to affect a nation's politics by way of their local media.
In October 1986, the term gained increased currency in the U.S. when it was revealed that two months previously, the Reagan Administration had engaged in a disinformation campaign against then-leader of Libya Muammar Gaddafi. White House representative Larry Speakes said reports of a planned attack on Libya as first broken by The Wall Street Journal on August 25, 1986, were "authoritative", and other newspapers including The Washington Post then wrote articles saying this was factual. U.S. State Department representative Bernard Kalb resigned from his position in protest over the disinformation campaign, and said: "Faith in the word of America is the pulse beat of our democracy."
The executive branch of the Reagan administration kept watch on disinformation campaigns through three yearly publications by the Department of State: Active Measures: A Report on the Substance and Process of Anti-U.S. Disinformation and Propaganda Campaigns ; Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1986–87 ; and Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1987–88.
According to a report by Reuters, the United States ran a propaganda campaign to spread disinformation about the Sinovac Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, including using fake social media accounts to spread the disinformation that the Sinovac vaccine contained pork-derived ingredients and was therefore haram under Islamic law. Reuters said the ChinaAngVirus disinformation campaign was designed to "counter what it perceived as China's growing influence in the Philippines" and was prompted by the " that China's COVID diplomacy and propaganda could draw other Southeast Asian countries, such as Cambodia and Malaysia, closer to Beijing". The campaign was also described as "payback for Beijing's efforts to blame Washington for the pandemic". The campaign primarily targeted people in the Philippines and used a social media hashtag for "China is the virus" in Tagalog. The campaign ran from 2020 to mid-2021. The primary contractor for the U.S. military on the project was General Dynamics IT, which received $493 million for its role.
Since 2023, Republican members of the US Congress have attacked researchers who study disinformation as being against freedom of speech and as a euphemism for government censorship. On April 18, 2025, citing an Executive Order signed by Trump, the US National Science Foundation released a statement cancelling funding for disinformation research, saying that it does not fit with the NSF priorities, "including but not limited to those on diversity, equity, and inclusion and misinformation/disinformation."