With the spread of fake news, journalists need to recognise and understand the different categories, types, elements, and phases of information disorder.
Claire Wardle sets out the seven common forms of information disorder.
Categories of information disorder
- Satire or parody: No intention to cause harm but has potential to fool.
- Misleading content: Misleading use of information to frame an issue or individual.
- Imposter content: When genuine sources are impersonated.
- Fabricated content: New content is 100% false, designed to deceive and do harm.
- False connection: When headlines, visuals, or captions don’t support the content.
- False context: When genuine content is shared with false contextual information.
- Manipulated content: When genuine information or imagery is manipulated to deceive.
Types of information disorder
- Misinformation: Unintentional mistakes such as inaccurate photo captions, dates, statistics, translations, or when satire is taken seriously.
- Disinformation: Fabricated or deliberately manipulated audio-visual content. Intentionally created conspiracy theories or rumours.
- Malinformation: Deliberate publication of private information for personal or corporate rather than public interest. Deliberate change of context, date or time of genuine content.
Elements of information disorder
- Agent
- Message
- Interpreter
Phases of information disorder
- Creation: When the message is created.
- (Re)production: When the message is turned into a media product.
- Distribution: When the product is distributed or made public.
Note: This material above first appeared on First Draft and has been reproduced here with the author’s consent.
