Misinformation

Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is spread unintentionally. It is distinguished from disinformation by motive in that misinformation is simply erroneous, while disinformation, in contrast, is intended to mislead.^[1]

Makkai proposes the distinction between misinformation and disinformation to be a defining characteristic of idioms in the English language.^[2] An utterance is only idiomatic if it involves disinformation, where the listener can decode the utterance in a logical, and lexically correct, yet erroneous way. Where the listener simply decodes the lexemes incorrectly, the utterance is simply misinformation, and not idiomatic.

Damian Thompson defines counterknowledge as "misinformation packaged to look like fact".^[3] Using the definition above, this may refer to disinformation, as the motive is deliberate and often pecuniary.

Examples

According to Thompson, all three of the following statements are misinformations, or counterknowledge, packaged to look like fact :

• "The U.S. government knew in advance about the plan to crash passenger jets into the World Trade Center^{[citation needed]}.
• There is a link between childhood autism and the MMR vaccine^{[citation needed]}.
• The structure of a cell is too complex to have evolved through natural selection."^[4]

See also

Look up misinformation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Factoid
• Gossip
• Junk science
• Misquotation
• Pseudoscience
• Rumor
• Social constructionism
• Counter Misinformation Team

References

Further reading

• Christopher Murphy (2005). Competitive Intelligence: Gathering, Analysing And Putting It to Work. Gower Publishing, Ltd.. pp. 186–189. ISBN 0566085372.  — a case study of misinformation arising from simple error
• Martin C. Libicki (2007). "Misinformation and disinformation". Conquest in Cyberspace: National Security and Information Warfare. Cambridge University Press. p. 51ff. ISBN 0521871603. 
• Jürg Strässler (1982). Idioms in English: A Pragmatic Analysis. Gunter Narr Verlag. pp. 43–44. ISBN 3878089716.