Beware of the real news, I avoid fake news alone

Beware of the real news, I avoid fake news alone

• Disinformation takes several forms: misinformation (false information without negative intent), disinformation (false with intent to harm) and mal-information (real information used maliciously).
• Combating strategies differ: misinformation can be corrected through dialogue and clarification, disinformation requires alternative narratives and sustained effort, and mal-information is the most difficult to manage because of the nuances and emotions involved.
• The critical spirit is essential. Constantly practicing critical thinking helps identify manipulations, especially when information triggers strong emotions.

It's an ideal scenario where we have the exercise designed to verify and recognize incorrect information. It's just that, often, it's more complicated than that. Not all misinformation involves false information, on the contrary.

We speak of misinformation when we propagate incorrect information without intending to harm, of disinformation when false information is doubled by the intention to create harm, and of mal-information, when we propagate real information but used with malicious intent

Misinformation: False information without negative intent

False information without negative intent behind it (misinformation) is easiest to disarm. When the source is not malicious, but only genuinely concerned with a particular topic, an open discussion of clarification can be had, and often the source even comes back on the error in one way or another.

We see this phenomenon very often, for example, in groups about vaccination, when, once clarified, parents who started a misinformation then themselves become communication vectors for the right information.

Disinformation: False information with intent to harm

False information with intent to damage the image (disinformation) comes with the added challenge of not being able to build a dialogue with its source.

In this scenario, we can only develop a parallel narrative that is sufficiently coherent and easily accessible to the target audience. Through this parative we can try to correct the error and restore trust, and that often requires sustained effort in the long term.

Mal-information: real information used maliciously

Most of the challenges are dealing with a situation of template information, a misinformation in which the source information is not always wrong or false and cannot be countered factually. The subtleties left to interpretation can be as toxic as classic misinformation, and the terrain on which we are forced to act is a much more volatile one.

We are talking here of many conspiracy theories, which start from real and concrete examples, planted in an environment suffocated by fear, anxiety, rebellion, until they grow so much that they swallow any form of reason. No educational speech will ever be able to compete with a surge of excitement, and approaches here must take this into account.

Conclusion: how we manage misinformation

Misinformation can take many forms and is not always easy to detect by simply comparing sources. Sometimes it starts from the very truths, but it is the intention behind it that sets the game.

This does not mean that we have to become paranoid, but we can constantly exercise this muscle, of the critical spirit, getting used to questioning whatever information arouses in us very strong emotions.

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