Disinformation and Propaganda
Disinformation and Propaganda
Disinformation is a relatively new word. Most observers trace it back to the Russian word dezinformatsiya, which Soviet planners in the 1950s defined as “dissemination (in the press, on the radio, etc.) of false reports intended to mislead public opinion.” Others suggest that the earliest use of the term originated in 1930s Nazi Germany. In either case, it is much younger (and less commonly used) than ‘propaganda,’ which originated in the 1600s and generally connotes the selective use of information for political effect.
Whether and to what degree these terms overlap is subject to debate. Some define propaganda as the use of non-rational arguments to either advance or undermine a political ideal, and use disinformation as an alternative name for undermining propaganda. Others consider them to be separate concepts altogether. One popular distinction holds that disinformation also describes politically motivated messaging designed explicitly to engender public cynicism, uncertainty, apathy, distrust, and paranoia, all of which disincentives citizen engagement and mobilization for social or political change.
Disinformation is characterized by the intention behind it, as all disinformation is spread on purpose to influence people and deceive them. Although not limited to just governmental entities, disinformation is often used in state-funded propaganda to feed people the leaders’ own narrative or influence other nations and their citizens.
Disinformation is false information purposely spread to influence public opinion or obscure the truth. This information is often spread through social media and can cause people to mistrust reliable sources.
NATO views disinformation as “the deliberate creation and dissemination of false and/or manipulated information with the intent to deceive and/or mislead.”
The European Commission understands disinformation “as verifiably false or misleading information that is created, presented and disseminated for economic gain or to intentionally deceive the public, and may cause public harm.”
Why does disinformation work this well?
- Because people believe what they want to believe. We all tend to avoid cognitive dissonance – that means that we believe information that fits into our own world view above all, our social identity.
- Because technical possibilities make it increasingly difficult to identify and expose disinformation nowadays. For this, media awareness and a certain level of media competence – also among employees of a company – is particularly necessary.
- Because disinformation and especially fake news play with negative emotions and this exactly what the authors make use of. The human brain gives negative news much more attention than positive news and thus arouses more interest among readers. This phenomenon is also called negativity bias (also: negativity effect) and describes the effect that people are more likely to be attracted to negative news.
- Because we are confronted with a huge amount of information every day through social media. Verifying each one of these pieces of information would probably take us days. Therefore, the power of misinformation and disinformation should not be underestimated, because we often assume – without checking – that sources are reliable and thus (intentionally) false news can also have a particularly high credibility.