Unlike misinformation, which is also a form of wrong information, disinformation is produced by people who intend to deceive their audience.
A group might plant disinformation in reports, in press releases, in public statements or in practically any other routine, occasional or unusual communique. Disinformation can also be leaked, or covertly released to a source who can be trusted to repeat the false information.
A common disinformation tactic is to mix truth, half-truths, and lies. Disinformants sometimes seek to gain the confidence of their audience through emotional appeals or by using semi-neutral language interlaced with threads of disinformation.
It may be easier to ask and answer questions like "at what point does opinion or advocacy become disinformation?", "can history or ideology remain simplified without being disinforming?", and "what concept equals what other concept in this opinion, advocacy, history, or ideology?" Such distinctions are studied in the fields of conceptual metaphor, information warfare, psychological operations, scientific method, historical method and the sociology of knowledge.
One distinction that most students of these topics accept is that someone with an economic self-interest is rarely, if ever, a neutral observer.
Is disinformation just lying?
No. The word "lying " usually implies an awareness of spreading untruths. Long study in psychology, e.g. false memory syndrome, groupthink, suggests that honest advocates of a view can rarely tell when they have accepted some questionable premise or evidence along with the valid evidence for that view. This suggests a constructive role for their opponents in 'culling' that evidence and moderating extreme points of view among front groups, and industry experts. Such views may reflect not a desire to disinform, but rather a biased mind-set or paradigm where some central dogma has become accepted as true.
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