I've also encountered a big issue with the consistency of definitions of disinformation and misinformation, which are used interchangeably, which has allowed bad actors to exploit the confusion for their own ends. I've been using the definitions as per Claire Wardle's work: - ThreadSky

eliothiggins.bsky.social • 58 days ago

I've also encountered a big issue with the consistency of definitions of disinformation and misinformation, which are used interchangeably, which has allowed bad actors to exploit the confusion for their own ends. I've been using the definitions as per Claire Wardle's work:

Comments

olgs7.bsky.social•58 days ago

Agree with you completely on both of these points. That’s why I’m such a stickler on the definitions as well. We need to clear about the distinct problems we’re addressing and also recognize the broader information disorder issue.

tom-phillips.com•58 days ago

One limitation with this classification scheme - which, to be clear, is valuable and important and I've used myself - is that it solely focuses on the intent of the originator of the information, rather than those who spread it.

tom-phillips.com•58 days ago

So disinfo gets spread by people who truly believe it. Honest mistakes get maliciously amplified by bad actors. Maliciously released info may be used in good faith by responsible actors. I think the (good, legit) focus on identifying origins sometimes misses the importance of the info's journey.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•58 days ago

Yes, my work expands on that to create a model of information disorder that can then be applied to various scenarios and used to develop a response.

tom-phillips.com•58 days ago

Is that already published or forthcoming? (honest question, not being weirdly snarky, I've not been keeping up as assiduously in the last few years)

eliothiggins.bsky.social•58 days ago

There's a 5000 word piece that's forthcoming.

tom-phillips.com•58 days ago

Oh fantastic, this probably marks me as a very broken person but I am excited to read it.

stevetownsend0.bsky.social•58 days ago

Is this written up online anywhere, or in the upcoming piece only?
I've observed that disinformation can sometimes be spread innocently - in that case I'd view the end user as misinformer and the source as disinformer.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•58 days ago

I've got a 5000 word piece that we're hoping to get published in a journal.

stevetownsend0.bsky.social•58 days ago

Great, I'll keep an eye out

joshspero.ft.com•58 days ago

I haven't thought too deeply about this but I do think fine differences of definition with similar terms don't help, purely from a branding/comms point of view -- you either want one label or sufficiently different ones.

jasperjackson.bsky.social•58 days ago

This is understandable, and we attempt to cluster the two right hand sides of this under "influence ops" to highlight the actual malign actors, but the impreciseness has helped bad faith pushback.

joshspero.ft.com•58 days ago

One of the FT style council's principles is "We favour economy of expression but not at the expense of accuracy, clarity, context and nuance"; I think we can give readers more detail in the copy, eg "misinformation sponsored by Russia" vs "misinformation from a misguided X user"

jasperjackson.bsky.social•58 days ago

Yeah, and I don't think that's a bad way of doing it. But the impreciseness has come from those terms being used carelessly, and it's done damage, so I understand the reasons for wanting specific terms. Tbf, we haven't quite shaken off the use of "fake news" to refer to misinfo/disinfo of all types.

joshspero.ft.com•58 days ago

I'm interested in what the damage is (vs the intentional damage of malicious actors) -- is this a case where we're worrying too much about terms while Russian bots are unrestricted on X?

jasperjackson.bsky.social•58 days ago

I think it helped eg the dismantling of anti-disinfo agencies and initiatives in the US, and also undermined attempts to make tech cos do something about it in a nuanced way. Difficult to prove!

stevetownsend0.bsky.social•58 days ago

This is interesting. Thanks

anowlcalledsage.bsky.social•58 days ago

Have you just summarised why 'The Traitors' is so compelling? 🤔

😁

anineffablegrump.bsky.social•58 days ago

Alan Cummings 10/10

anowlcalledsage.bsky.social•58 days ago

Whilst I am 100% aware of Alan and his involvement, in the UK we have Claudia 😁

eliothiggins.bsky.social•58 days ago

It's provides a lot of examples of how groups manufacture beliefs when there's scant evidence avaliable to base those beliefs on.

framob.bsky.social•58 days ago

There’s one bit I feel you have forgot,these people who use all three to increase their social standing,not just in the virtual world but use the virtual world to increase their standing in the actual world . Like we have these pod casters who don’t care if true or false but feel that’s what their /

framob.bsky.social•58 days ago

Listeners want to hear thus they repeat the same dis-mis-info in order to garner more support from the gullible,or do we just stick to narcissistic tendencies bc they feel they should be or want to be important ?

geordiekakamora.bsky.social•58 days ago

Penalties for those deemed to be spreading misinformation if they do it knowingly (or a person in their field would be reasonably expected to know) enforced by regulators (IPSO).

meyer-resende.bsky.social•58 days ago

Indeed + differentiation between content, accounts, amplification/behaviour. And overstretching the disinformation category.

bearmarshal.bsky.social•58 days ago

It doesn't help that the two terms differ only by a single letter that doesn't even change the syllable very much. Makes it hard to remember what term was used in any past situation.

macca77.bsky.social•58 days ago

This is great

ruggledome.bsky.social•58 days ago

📌

batevladi.bsky.social•58 days ago

It's a good one

eliothiggins.bsky.social•58 days ago

Also, the idea that only dumb people fall for disordered information and smart people creating and spreading it must know they're spreading false information is way, way off course.

londondiscuss.bsky.social•58 days ago

I read years ago (pre-internet) that university-educated were often easier for cults to recruit, because their wish to critical think critically and explore could be used against them, to lead them in.

shellygee.bsky.social•57 days ago

Finally, some sense!

luccej.bsky.social•58 days ago

Thank you for sharing this! It might be easier to perceive disinfo as a foreign-caused, isolated problem that we can curb instead of perceiving it as a symptom of broader, systemic issues in the current (not only) information environment that require complex solutions. Hopefully it changes soon.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•58 days ago

Absolutely, and it's led to a failure to effectively address the issue.

steveprior.bsky.social•58 days ago

You seem to believe there is a desire to fix it?

Whereas I have seen countless western democratic politicians (who ultimately control the legislature) being complicit.

So who is the ‘we’ to address it?

shellygee.bsky.social•57 days ago

Good question.

thuotila.bsky.social•58 days ago

I remember this one study where they found even a correlation between smarts and getting carried way with misinformation.

flpublicaffairs.bsky.social•58 days ago

💯 agree

eliothiggins.bsky.social•58 days ago

The thing to remember is that when you're inside a bubble, it becomes the lens through which you see the world.

chrissytu.bsky.social•58 days ago

So true

janvonheiroth.bsky.social•58 days ago

well put!

shellygee.bsky.social•57 days ago

And the world is a perception filtered through our beliefs! People don’t understand this. To say MAGA is “stupid” is beyond simplistic.

warcabbitmwm.bsky.social•58 days ago

I like that. Worth quoting

davidwonderland.bsky.social•58 days ago

Related:
"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do." --Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
https://books.google.com/books?id=Zl5eVJ1Xp0IC&pg=PA80&dq=%22reasonable+creature%22+intitle:autobiography+inauthor:benjamin+inauthor:franklin&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-24-CnumKAxV3JkQIHYCCEos4ChDoAXoECAsQAg#v=onepage&q=%22reasonable%20creature%22%20intitle%3Aautobiography%20inauthor%3Abenjamin%20inauthor%3Afranklin&f=false

cuntrarianavoider.bsky.social•58 days ago

Elon Musk enters stage right cupping his balls

ztopia.bsky.social•58 days ago

Don’t we all have our own bubbles now?

eliothiggins.bsky.social•58 days ago

With regards to information disorder what's important is how those bubbles act the reinforce and radicalise the opinions of the people inside it.

ztopia.bsky.social•58 days ago

Thanks. Might be good to define bubble if it’s used as a term in the upcoming article.

janemccallion.bsky.social•58 days ago

Someone I love and consider very intelligent has been completely radicalised by social media. They are somewhat socially isolated irl, which I think is what really put the nail in the coffin. I imagine that is a fairly common story.

simonbm.bsky.social•58 days ago

I know someone who has been similarly radicalised by the British press with zero use of social media.

kobayashimaru22.bsky.social•53 days ago

Which direction? Cuz the one two punch of COVID being memoryholed and every trusted media source indulging in multiple Iraq WMD level hoaxes to expedite the Gaza genocide radicalized the fuck out of me

eliothiggins.bsky.social•58 days ago

Any chance they've generally been distrustful of some source of authority, then went through some sort of crisis (be it political, social, economic, personal, etc) which led them to spend a lot of time online doing their own research?

janemccallion.bsky.social•58 days ago

They’re long-term self employed, which lends itself to spending time online, but yes generally distrustful of authority. They ended up in a situation where their ability to concentrate was severely impaired, which lent itself to increased consumption of social media vs books or long-form media.

elmobronowski.bsky.social•58 days ago

Unfortunately that last part sounds like most of the world these days

gardensofjoy.bsky.social•58 days ago

If you only hear false information from your media, you have no way of knowing if there is other knowledge available. This is why people believed that the universe revolved around the earth and that the earth was flat for thousands of years.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply