Is Disinformation the Same as Misinformation?

We all make honest mistakes. A classic example of misinformation in US history occurred in November 1948, when a Chicago newspaper sent its papers off to print before presidential election results were fully counted. Harry Truman was expected to lose. And the paper’s staff, confident in the prediction and in a rush to print, approved the front-page headline “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

When the counting was finished, it became clear Harry Truman had won. While the newspaper had misinformed its readers, its staff hadn’t done so in a deliberate attempt to deceive. They quickly cleared up the mistake by reprinting the paper with the correct results.

For an example of disinformation, we can look to another US presidential election. Joe Biden won the 2020 election; this result was clear after multiple recounts in several states. However, numerous bad actors subsequently spread lies to convince people otherwise.

This disinformation is still circulating. Very few influential people who publicly claimed that President Biden lost have acknowledged the truth. And it’s because they stand to gain from the lie.

Propaganda can be defined as the deliberate “dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumours, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion… [with] a relatively heavy emphasis on manipulation.”

The goals of propaganda are similar to disinformation—to influence our opinions, feelings, and actions, especially to reinforce a particular political ideology—but propaganda includes a broader set of tactics; disinformation is just one particular subset of those.