Misinformation: What It Is, How It Spreads and How to Respond to It

Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is shared without an intent to deceive. The person passing it on may believe it completely, which is exactly what makes misinformation so durable: it travels through ordinary, well-meaning people, in ordinary conversations, at ordinary speed, and it arrives carrying the trust attached to whoever shared it.

Table of Contents

• What is misinformation?
• How is misinformation different from disinformation?
• How does misinformation spread?
• Why do people share misinformation?
• How can you spot misinformation before you share it?
• What should brands and PR teams do when misinformation concerns them?
• What should you not do in response?
• Frequently asked questions

What is misinformation?

Misinformation is any false, incomplete or misleading content presented as fact, regardless of why it was created or shared. A misdated photograph, a headline that overstates what a report actually said, a quotation stripped of the sentence that qualified it, a rumour repeated as news, an honest mistake in a breaking story that never gets corrected in the places it travelled to: all of these are misinformation once they are in circulation and being treated as true.

Two features define it. The first is falsity, which is broader than outright invention. Most misinformation is not fabricated from nothing; it is usually a real fact in the wrong place, at the wrong time, attached to the wrong event, or missing the context that changes its meaning. A genuine image from an old flood used to illustrate today’s storm is not a fake image. It is still misinformation, because the claim it is being used to support is false.

The second feature is that intent is not required. That is the line that separates this concept from its close relative, and it matters practically, not just academically. If you respond to every false claim as though it were an attack, you will mishandle most of what you meet, because most of what you meet is error, haste and misunderstanding moving through people who would be embarrassed to learn they had passed it on.

How is misinformation different from disinformation?

The difference is intent. Misinformation is false information shared without intent to deceive; disinformation is false information created or spread deliberately, in order to mislead, damage, profit or influence. The same false claim can be disinformation in the hands of the person who manufactured it and misinformation in the hands of everyone who later shares it in good faith.

Think of it as a chain. At the start of the chain there may be a deliberate act: a fabricated screenshot, a distorted edit, a claim invented to harm a competitor or a public figure. That is disinformation. One step along the chain, a reader who finds it plausible and forwards it to a family group is not part of that plan. They are spreading misinformation. By the time a false story has reached most of its audience, it is usually travelling as misinformation, carried by people who are not lying and do not think they are passing on anything doubtful.

This is why the history of organised persuasion is a warning as well as a history. The techniques described in accounts of Edward Bernays and the birth of modern public relations show how easily professional communication can cross from informing a public into engineering one. Ethical practice is defined by staying on the right side of that line: persuading openly, with claims you can defend, and never planting a falsehood and relying on innocent people to carry it for you.

For a brand or a PR team, the distinction changes the response. Misinformation about you usually calls for correction: clear facts, calmly supplied, in the places the error is travelling. Disinformation about you may also call for correction, but it can raise further questions about source, motive and evidence, and sometimes about platform reporting or legal advice. Misdiagnosing one as the other wastes effort in both directions: treating an honest error as a conspiracy makes you look paranoid, and treating a deliberate campaign as a misunderstanding leaves the source free to repeat it.

How does misinformation spread?

Misinformation spreads through the normal machinery of attention, and it helps to understand that machinery rather than simply deplore it.

• Speed beats checking. Sharing takes a tap; verification takes minutes. In a fast-moving story, the first version of events is often the least reliable, and it is the version most people see.
• Emotion is a carrier. Content that surprises, frightens, angers or delights gets passed on. A false claim that produces a strong feeling has an advantage over a true claim that produces none, because the feeling itself feels like a reason to share.
• Repetition creates familiarity. A claim seen several times begins to feel established, even when every sighting traces back to the same single, unverified source. Familiarity is easily mistaken for corroboration.
• Context falls off in transit. A screenshot loses its date, its link and its qualifications. A clip loses what happened before and after. Each hop strips away the information a reader would need to judge the claim, while keeping the claim itself perfectly intact.
• Closed groups accelerate trust. In a private group or chat, the sharer’s personal credibility replaces the source’s. Questioning the claim can feel like questioning the friend, so the claim passes unchallenged.
• Algorithms reward engagement. Platforms surface what people react to. A falsehood that provokes argument may be distributed more widely precisely because people are arguing about it, including people arguing that it is false.

Notice that very little of this requires villains. It requires a phone, a feeling and a few seconds. That is why misinformation is best understood as a systems problem rather than a character problem: ordinary habits, operating inside systems designed for speed and reaction, will produce it reliably unless checking habits are built into the same routine.

Why do people share misinformation?

People rarely share something because they have evaluated it and decided it is true. They share because the act of sharing does something else for them. It warns people they care about. It entertains. It signals which side they are on. It expresses outrage, loyalty, humour or belonging. It fills a silence in a group. In many cases the truth of the item is not even the point of the share; it is the social meaning of passing it on.

Identity plays a large part. A claim that flatters our group’s view of the world, or confirms what we already suspect about an opponent, an institution or a brand, feels right before it has been checked, and feeling right is a powerful substitute for being right. Claims that cut the other way receive far more scrutiny: we interrogate what we dislike and wave through what we agree with. Nobody is immune to this asymmetry, including journalists, executives and communications professionals, which is why procedures matter more than confidence.

There is also simple cognitive economy. Nobody can verify everything, so everyone uses shortcuts: does this look like the sort of thing this source usually says, does the headline match what I already know, have I seen this elsewhere? Those shortcuts work well enough most of the time, and fail exactly where misinformation lives: in the unusual claim, the cropped image, the story designed, or merely likely, to be believed at a glance.

How can you spot misinformation before you share it?

You do not need specialist skills. You need a short pause and a few repeatable checks, applied especially to the items you most want to be true.

1. Read past the headline. Headlines compress and sometimes distort. If you have not read the piece, you are sharing a claim you have not actually seen supported.
2. Find the original source. Follow the claim back to where it started. Is it a named person, an official document, direct footage, or a screenshot of a screenshot attributed to nobody?
3. Check the date and the context. Search the key names and event. Old material recirculated as new is one of the most common forms misinformation takes.
4. Look for independent coverage. If something significant has happened, more than one credible outlet will report it, in their own words, with their own sourcing. One source repeated a hundred times is still one source.
5. Inspect images and clips sceptically. Ask what is outside the frame and what came before the clip started. A reverse image search can reveal earlier uses of a photograph in seconds.
6. Notice your own reaction. A surge of anger, triumph or vindication is a signal to slow down, not to share faster. The stronger the feeling, the more the item deserves checking.
7. Be willing to share nothing. Not sharing is always an option. ‘I have seen this but I cannot verify it’ is a complete and useful contribution to any conversation.

These habits are the individual version of what good newsrooms do institutionally: separate the claim from the carrier, trace it to its origin, and require a second, independent leg before standing on it. They take a minute or two. The correction, if you share first and check later, will reach only a fraction of the people the original reached, if it reaches them at all.

What should brands and PR teams do when misinformation concerns them?

When the false claim is about your organisation, the goal is narrow and practical: get an accurate, findable record in front of the people who have seen the falsehood, without making the falsehood more famous than it was. Work in this order.

• Establish what is actually true. Before any statement, verify your own facts internally: dates, figures, decisions, who said what. A correction that itself needs correcting destroys the only asset you have in this situation, which is being the reliable source.
• Judge the scale honestly. Is the claim spreading beyond a small circle? Is it being picked up by journalists or larger accounts? Is it affecting customers, partners or staff? A claim seen by fifty people does not need a response broadcast to fifty thousand.
• Correct at the level of the spread. Reply where the claim is travelling, in the same format where possible, and keep the correction self-contained: the true fact first, briefly, with evidence a reader can inspect.
• Publish a durable record. Put the verified facts on your own site or newsroom page, where they can be linked, quoted and found later. The discipline of how to write a press release applies here in miniature: facts first, in order, with nothing a reader has to take on trust.
• Brief your spokespeople. Anyone likely to be asked about the claim needs the same verified facts and the same restraint. Preparation of the kind covered in media training basics matters most in exactly this moment: answer the question asked, give the fact, and do not speculate about motives you cannot prove.
• Bring in the wider crisis discipline when the claim is doing real harm. If the falsehood is affecting safety, operations or legal exposure, it is no longer just a correction task. The sequencing in crisis management in public relations — acknowledge, establish facts, update on a stated rhythm — is the framework to work inside.

Throughout, keep the tone level. Correct the claim, not the people who believed it. Many of them are your customers, and they shared in good faith. A response that makes them feel foolish teaches them to defend the falsehood rather than abandon it. A response that gives them a better fact, and a graceful way to accept it, lets the correction travel through the same goodwill that carried the error.

What should you not do in response?

Most of the damage organisations do in these episodes is self-inflicted, and the patterns repeat. Do not repeat the false claim more prominently than the truth: a denial headlined with the falsehood can leave hurried readers remembering the falsehood and forgetting the denial. Lead with the true fact. Do not amplify a small claim with a large response; a national statement about a rumour almost nobody had heard is a distribution strategy for the rumour. Do not attack the sharers, accuse journalists of bad faith without evidence, or speculate publicly about who is ‘behind’ a claim when all you actually know is that it is wrong.

Do not delete, quietly edit or pretend. If your own earlier statement contributed to the confusion, say so and correct it openly; an acknowledged error is a credibility deposit, while a silently altered record, once noticed, is treated as proof of everything your critics suspected. Do not promise what you cannot control, and do not issue a correction before your own facts are settled in the hope of looking fast. In a misinformation episode, speed matters, but being the source that never has to correct itself matters more, because that reputation is what makes your next correction believable.

Finally, after the episode, write down what happened: where the claim started, how it travelled, what you said, and what worked. Misinformation about an organisation is rarely a one-off event. The team that has a record, a prepared holding line and pre-agreed approval routes will handle the next episode in hours rather than days, and with far less internal argument.

Frequently asked questions

What is the simple definition of misinformation?

Misinformation is false or misleading information shared without intent to deceive. The sharer may believe it is true. Intent is what separates it from disinformation.

What is the difference between misinformation and disinformation?

Intent. Disinformation is created or spread deliberately to mislead. Misinformation is spread without that intent, often by people who believe it. The same claim can be both at different points in its journey.

Can a true fact be part of misinformation?

Yes. A genuine photograph, quotation or figure used in the wrong context, at the wrong time or attached to the wrong event misleads just as effectively as an invented one, and is one of the most common forms.

Should a brand respond to every false claim about it?

No. Judge the claim’s reach and harm first. Correct where it is actually spreading, at a scale that matches it, so the response does not distribute a claim most people had never seen.

What is the first thing to do when misinformation concerns your organisation?

Verify your own facts. Establish exactly what is true, from internal records, before saying anything publicly. A correction is only useful if it never needs correcting itself.