This report was produced in collaboration with
Winona State University’s Eng 472 Seminar on Disinformation.

Misinformation

Misinformation harms the health and stability of individuals and society in many ways.

What are misinformation, disinformation, and fake news?

These three concepts are closely related and are often grouped together using misinformation as an umbrella term. Still, each of these terms describe distinct forms of misleading or incorrect information.

Disinformation is the spread of false information with the intent to cause harm. Examples include foreign countries or domestic extremist groups seeking to disrupt U.S. political stability. Bad actors may create disinformation around divisive issues, like vaccination or public school funding, to deepen disagreement among Americans. While reasonable debate is necessary in a democracy, disinformation manipulates Americans’ understanding of an issue to divide Americans against each other.

Disinformation uses lies to target individuals with the intent of creating feelings of anger, fear, and outrage. These strong emotional responses help create distrust of institutions such as the media, government, corporations, or even other groups of citizens.

Misinformation is typically made up of inaccurate or incomplete information alongside facts and real events and can trigger the same emotional responses as disinformation.

Like disinformation, misinformation can be intended to deceive. However, those who share misinformation may be doing so with good intentions – like sharing news about a national tragedy, or a new treatment for an illness, or a potential danger to their community. This misinformation, even if well intended, spreads lies and mistruth. Misinformation can create confusion, fear, distrust, or unhealthy behaviors and reactions in individuals and groups of people.

Fake news is misinformation that takes on the appearance of a traditional news outlet. Fake news organizations may claim that they are an investigative news source that publishes the “real” truth. These news outlets are often linked to other fake news sources and claim to “fight” for the truth, but they often contain extreme opinion, not fact-based evaluation.

Fully online news outlets, podcasts, and other internet media tend to carry more bias as compared to traditional print or broadcast news outlets. Recognize when you are getting mainly opinion and emotion, and not many facts, as you read online.

How can I Spot Misinformation?

To protect yourself against misinformation, you can use a technique called pre-bunking. Pre-bunking allows you to know the signs of misinformation before you are manipulated. To protect yourself, you need to know the common forms of misinformation, listed below. You can also experience these common forms of misinformation by playing this online game created by the University of Cambridge.

Always prepare yourself to recognize these common techniques of manipulation before reading social media.

Conspiracy theory posits that an all-powerful, secret group of people are manipulating world events. Be suspicious of any news making this claim.

But why is conspiracy theory appealing? Conspiracy theories are stories that offer people answers even if the conspiracy theory is wrong, contradictory, or impossible. Uncertainty in our lives produces anxiety and fear. People like to feel certain about how the world works. Conspiracy theories offer stories that fill the void of uncertainty. Additionally, research shows that when a big event happens, like a national tragedy, people want to believe that there is an equally big cause from a villain. We don’t want to feel that life is random. Conspiracy theorists distort information and create stories to provide certainty in uncertain times.

You can protect yourself from misinformation by knowing the above characteristics of conspiracy theories.

Polarization causes a divide between two or more groups, often using “us vs. them” messaging meant to make you quickly choose a side on an issue. These messages often blame a specific group for societal problems, creating a “them” group as a target for negative reactions. The groups blamed are often those commonly targeted in society for reasons of race, sexual orientation, gender, religion, or political beliefs.

Protect yourself from misinformation by noticing the “us v. them” tactic of polarization. Be suspicious of messages that use strong emotion and blame a specific marginalized group for an unsolved political problem.

Impersonation in social media is often a bad actor with a fake social media account posing as a public figure or person of authority. For instance, fake doctors and fake experts are often used in social media marketing. You may need to perform an additional online search to confirm that the expert is a real person with real expertise.

Another form of impersonation is more international in scope. Foreign agents will sometimes pose as Americans on social media, as a means of shaping public sentiment, encouraging radicalism, and sowing division. Studies show that most Americans do not like extremism in their politics, but this form of impersonation often attempts to push Americans toward politically or culturally extreme views.

Social media accounts often impersonate real institutions. These accounts may have official sounding names that evoke trust, but they are used to deceive, radicalize, or otherwise misinform. Play this online game to learn more about impersonation of this type.

Most social media websites, like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, have verification checkmarks. These checkmarks show you that the social media account is the real person or organization, and not an impersonation.

Emotions can be used in misinformation to make you feel vulnerable. Misinformation often uses words that trigger fear or anger. Traditional news sources and public information will not purposefully scare you or blame other groups to generate outrage.

Misinformation can be used to make an certain group look dangerous, evil, or foolish. Buzzwords such as “danger” or “attack” can be used in headlines to draw you in and spike your emotions. The more emotional the post, the more likely the post is to get a reaction, heighten your fear, and lower your tolerance.

Play the Bad News online game to learn more about the many types of emotional buzz words and phrases used to make you click on misinformation.

Discrediting legitimate sources of good information is a popular tactic of misinformation. Good information is the best way to stop misinformation. Thus, organizations that create misinformation for money or power need to attack and undermine any information that is truthful and competes with their misinformation. Discrediting creates confusion and fosters and environment in which media consumers no longer know what to believe. This confusion means people will more easily believe and click on misinformation.

Discrediting can take the form of ridiculing an expert’s findings or advice, often by calling attention to an irrelevant negative aspect of the expert or organization. For instance, a discrediting post might suggestion that climate change or other scientific phenomena can’t be real because scientists have made mistakes in the past. Discrediting often calls attention to an official source’s reputation, rather than the good information itself.

Discrediting can also use many of the elements listed above, from polarization to conspiracy theory to impersonation.

Why do people create or spread misinformation?

To cause harm. People that purposely spread misinformation want to cause confusion and hurt in a specific community that opposes their personal or political views. These attack creates fear and outrage in the targeted community, but also creates fear and anger in those who are manipulated into blaming the community.

To gain popularity. Many social media influencers will do just about anything to attract attention to their accounts, in hopes of going viral or building more lasting fame. These attention seeking tactics can be harmless, but not always. “Rage-bait” is one of the more common forms of misinformation used for popularity. Social media users will upload outrageous posts to generate extreme reactions from the public. The more interaction a post receives – even negative interaction – the more popular it will become. Remember: just because someone has a larger following, this does not guarantee good intentions or good information.

To manipulate. Misinformation targets people who are inclined to help people in need – either by bringing attention to urgent social issues, promoting new treatments for medical conditions, or sharing ways to help in the wake of tragedy. This is commonly seen in health scams and after natural catastrophes. Our natural inclination to help might lead us to unwittingly share misinformation.

Remember, your compassion can be taken advantage of when you post deceptive statements alongside your well-intentioned messages. Misinformation muddles the truth and makes it harder for authority figures to do their jobs to protect the public. When officials have to address misinformation or the physical problems it causes, resources are taken away from the aid process.

Why should I care about misinformation?

Misinformation harms your health, your environment, your trust in experts, leaders, and government, and your finances.

Health
Misinformation can put your health at risk. For example, vaccine misinformation based on a retracted medical study has spread for several decades, spreading the false belief that vaccines cause autism. This misinformation has helped to fuel to outbreaks of measles and other easily avoidable diseases.

Another example of health risk caused by misinformation is the promotion of ‘miracle’ supplements. The COVID-19 pandemic saw online accounts promoting bleach or ivermectin as treatment for the virus – ideas that did not come from the CDC, the National Institute of Health, or local health officials, but instead from people with no medical training or education.

Environment
Environmental misinformation also causes damage. Fossil fuel companies are a great example of institutions that spread misinformation that helps their industry.

Groups claiming hazardous environmental materials are safe can appear as neutral scientists or neighborly grassroots citizens. However, these groups may be part of “astroturfing,” a process where scientists are hired to create scientific results that challenge and cause doubt about scientific research produced by neutral scientists. These “astroturf” groups often have trustworthy names, such as the Global Climate Coalition, a high-profile astroturf group paid for by the fossil fuel industry. These groups pretend to be experts and environmentalists, yet they use their research and activism to fight science and regulation of pollutants. To learn more about how these groups operate, watch the short video at this link.

Democracy
Misinformation threatens democracy, even here in Minnesota. In the 2024 election season, Governor Tim Walz was attacked online by a supposed former student of his. However, Walz’s attacker was not a former student at all. Rather, this accuser was a “troll,” an impersonator writing online sheerly to cause harm. In the same election season, the Russian government made a fake video about Haitian immigrants voting multiple times in Georgia. This video was shared thousands of times by Americans, creating distrust in the U.S. voting system. The video was also intended to create hostility toward immigrants and fears of illegal voting. Goals like these are common in political misinformation. Thousands of messages like these are produced every day. Be suspicious of messaging, images, and videos posted anonymously by people making outrageous or attack-based political claims.

Finances
Misinformation can cause you financial harm. The Federal Trade Commission reports that in 2023, Americans lost more than $10 billion to fraud. Whether these scams start online, over the phone, by mail, or in person, these scammers present “opportunities” that seem too good to be true and will say or do anything they can to get money from their victims. Scammers rely on people acting quickly, and against their better judgement, by stressing the rewards individuals can realize if they follow the scammer’s direction.

What Can I Do to Protect Myself and Others?

Educate yourself on issues
Don’t just trust the messages in your social media or newsfeed. Search credible fact-checkers like PolitiFact that debunk false information or verify strange information.

Check the source
Is the information that you’re reading coming from a credible source? Or is the information coming from somewhere that is opinion-based? Use the SIFT Method (Stop, Investigate the Source, Find Better Coverage, Trace Claims) to help determine if a source is reliable or not.

Read more than just the headline of an article
The headline of an article is meant to pull you in. Reading the information in the article will give you a broader understanding of the issues it covers. This will help you decide if the information and headline are good information or misinformation.

Read sources that are more than just your political opinion
Seek out resources that are different than your own opinion. If you are consistently online, you know that social media and the internet is full of confirmation bias, a process where we read only items that agree with our own opinion. Looking into opinions that are not your own will help you cut down on confirmation bias, see all sides of an argument, and avoid extremes.

Be skeptical of unverified information that you see
Be skeptical of the information that you see online. Check your facts to defend against misinformation. Ask yourself: is there any reason why you think a story would be fake? Come up with counterarguments as to why something might be false.