Misinformation, Disinformation, or Censorship?

What is false? What is still unknown? Who benefits if a claim spreads? Who benefits if it is suppressed?

This week’s lesson introduces students to one of the hardest problems in today’s information environment: how to identify misinformation and disinformation without treating every disputed claim as false.

This lesson walks students through six core ideas:

• The difference between misinformation and disinformation (and why intent matters)

• Why disinformation is rarely entirely false and how mixing truth with distortion makes it harder to detect

• A gradient of mis- and disinformation, from satire to fabrication

• How language manipulates thinking, through rhetorical devices like false dilemmas, emotional language, scapegoating, and ad hominem attacks

• How to investigate intent, using a case study of manipulated historical imagery

• How accusations of “misinformation” can sometimes be used too broadly, including to justify suppressing unresolved or later-supported claims