For the second round of EOTO presentations, the focus was on the Media Sphere. Elliott Baratta did his presentation on Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinformation. I chose to react to his presentation in this post because it ties into my own presentation on echo chambers quite a bit.
In his presentation, Mr. Baratta covers examples of fake news ranging from information about President Trump to Tiktoks about Disney. The fabricated stories about Trump golfing over Thanksgiving or that he didn't visit the troops for Christmas are great examples of instances when misinformation can have an impact on politics, especially with elections. When a candidate's name is smeared by misinformation, like in President Tump's case, the public is not able to make fully formed decisions when they vote and that may impact the results of the election. It is very irresponsible of the news outlets, even ones that traditionally are reliable sources, to report on these fabricated stories without fact checking their information.
Before Mr. Baratta's presentation, I thought that misinformation was the only term that covered false information, so I was interested to learn that there are differences between misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. He explains that misinformation is false information that spreads regardless of intent, disinformation is false information spread with the intention to manipulate or cause harm, and malinformation is also intentionally misleading, but it is based on facts that have been taken out of context. So, the story about the Disney drinking age tiktok is an example of misinformation, the fabricated stories about Trump's vacations are of course examples of disinformation, and the story that reported Trump had "impatiently" dumped the fish food at Japan's Palace is an example of malinformation. Knowing the differences between these three categories of false information is very helpful and makes a lot more sense to me now.
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