A Functional Analysis of Disinformation

Abstract

Prototypical instances of disinformation include deceptive advertising (in business and in politics), government propaganda, doctored photographs, forged documents, fake maps, internet frauds, fake websites, and manipulated Wikipedia entries. Disinformation can cause significant harm if people are misled by it. In order to address this critical threat to information quality, we first need to understand exactly what disinformation is. After surveying the various analyses of this concept that have been proposed by philosophers and information scientists, I argue that disinformation is misleading information that has the function of misleading.