Misinformation is conveying something that is untrue, but the speaker or writer believes it to be true. An example is someone who believes that touching wood protects you from harm. The belief derives from a Christian reverence for the wood of the cross on which Jesus Christ’s enemies crucified him. We must respect religious faiths, but be wary of superstitions which arise from them. All superstition is nonsense, from the importance of touching wood to the ill luck that might befall you on Friday 13th of any month, This too derives from the Christian belief that the thirteenth person at the eucharistic supper was Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver. Here is another example of a Christian belief distorted in some minds into superstition. All practitioners of superstitions are either victims of misinformation – mistaken hypotheses – or disinformation, which is lies.
Disinformation arises when someone spreads lies with the intention that they will be believed and acted on. An example is Donald Trump’s insistence in 2020 that victory in the USA elections was stolen from him. (This may have been misinformation, in which case Trump was deluded, or disinformation. He may have been lying to himself, in which case we have an example of an unholy alliance been misinformation and disinformation.)
Disinformation is a scourge of the twenty-first century. We can blame social media for this infiltration. Social media is easy for vulnerable young people to access through smartphones, and some of it is pernicious. Fake news spreads with lightning speed across platforms. One of these lies is that there is a mysterious, invisible power hell-bent on engulfing and destroying humanity. Even some intelligent people believe this, but it is nonsense. We see plenty of misery and evil on our planet Earth, but there is no doubt that ill intent arises from human minds and human actions. We have irrefutable evidence that abuse of power is a result of human evil; no ghosts or aliens are involved.
The most widespread conspiracy theories in recent memory were related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media played a part if spreading unscientific hypotheses. The WHO (Word Health Organization) director general admitted that they were fighting both a pandemic and an infodemic. Rumour and conspiracy theories persisted. An effect was to make some people afraid to take anti-COVID vaccinations.
I once lived in a country where there was a polio epidemic. As soon as I saw crippled children I took the first opportunity to have a vaccination against this crippling disease. Possibly scepticism about vaccinations arises from never having seen an unvaccinated, unlucky person.
Fake images and videos propagate lies, with the help of photo-editing software, images and videos. Fake videos can look and sound like real people. In 2016 Pope Francis fell victim to a fake news story, which falsely reported his endorsement of Donald Trump to be president of the United States of America. When the (then) Pope realised what had happened, he condemned disinformation as “probably the greatest damage that the media can do”. His comments came amid warnings of a “fake news” crisis in online media about the US elections. Social media platforms and search engines were widely criticised in the poll’s aftermath for failing to prevent the spread of fabricated stories.
In 2022 there was a video of President Zelenskyy of Ukraine surrendering to Russia. This was disinformation, and insulting to a brave, intelligent president and to all the patriotic Ukrainians who have fought and are still fighting for their country. We do not know who posted this, as example of what is known as a deepfake, but Ukrainians have warned that false propaganda might infest the social media.
We are living through times where it is essential to be vigilant. Both misinformation and disinformation are rife. Wars destroy life, limbs, hospitals and homes. The climate catastrophe causes droughts in some places, such as the Amazon rainforest, which will die unless it is soon deluged with rain. In other areas, such as Florida, hurricanes are rampant. At the time of writing, it is Hurricane Milton that is submerging homes, roads and fields, and drowning people and animals. In the UK we are comparatively lucky so far, but on the east coast in Hull and Great Yarmouth there are severe floods.
Stories about enraged gods thundering down from in Olympus or surging up from ocean floors would be misinformation from those who believe such wild imaginations, and disinformation from others who want to make innocent people believe that it is their own fault that they are suffering.
We must be careful where we obtain our news from, and wary of platforms on social media. We should read what reliable, intelligent people such as Greta Thunberg, Polly Toynbee, George Monbiot and Simon Tisdall write. In our conversations with others, we should discriminate between lies, mistakes and the truth.
Source: https://www.safes.so
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