One morning in Lagos, a young taxi driver was jolted awake by a 4 a.m. phone call from his mother. Panicked by the deadly Ebola outbreak sweeping West Africa in 2014, she urged him to bathe in hot salt water before dawn, a “remedy” she had seen in a text message making the rounds. She begged him to forward this advice to all his friends. The tip sounded urgent and lifesaving, so hundreds of people across Nigeria did the same, rapidly sharing the message on WhatsApp and by SMS. The only problem: it wasn’t true. Salt water cannot prevent Ebola, and health officials quickly debunked the claim, but not before at least two people died and many were hospitalised from drinking excessive salt water. This well-intentioned but wrong advice is one example of how false information can spread like wildfire in today’s connected world, sometimes with tragic results.
Now imagine a different scenario: A few years later, during a heated election in another country, a malicious rumour emerges online claiming one candidate has a secret offshore bank account used for bribes. The story is a complete fabrication, pure fiction, planted by opponents to sway voters.
Around the same time, hackers leaked real private emails from a prominent politician, exposing personal details that humiliated her in public, even though the emails had nothing to do with her job. These three situations, the unverified health tip, the deliberately fake story, and the weaponised leak, might all be called “fake news” in casual conversation. But in the study of harmful information, experts actually sort them into three distinct categories: misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.
These terms may sound academic, but their effects “pollute the information space worldwide” and disrupt our communities and democracies. In an age where social media can amplify a rumour or lie to millions in minutes, understanding the differences between misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation has become more urgent than ever. This article will explain each term, showing what they look like in practice, and tell the story of how they spread. By the end, you will know how to tell these concepts apart and why that knowledge is a crucial step in defending truth in the public arena.
What Do These Terms Mean?
Misinformation is false or misleading information that is shared without the intent to deceive. In plain terms, the person spreading misinformation believes it’s true (or at least isn’t trying to cause harm), and they may simply not know the information is wrong. Misinformation often starts as a mistake, a rumour, or a misunderstanding.
Real-life example: During the Ebola virus outbreak in Nigeria, many people were terrified and desperately seeking any protection. In that climate of fear, the bogus advice about a hot saltwater bath seemed credible to some. Families and friends forwarded the tip out of genuine concern, not realising it was false. This ultimately was misinformation, false information, spread with good intentions, and yet it had dangerous consequences. No one in that chain meant to harm others; in fact, they hoped to help. But misinformation shows that even well-meaning falsehoods can cause harm.
Misinformation can take many forms in everyday life. It might be an out-of-context photo on Facebook with a misleading caption, or a piece of news that a media outlet reported too quickly without full facts. It thrives especially in environments of uncertainty or emotion. People tend to share sensational claims that “align with their pre-existing beliefs and emotions without verifying their accuracy,”. We have all seen or witnessed friends or relatives share questionable tips or stories online, usually out of care or excitement, not realising they are spreading misinformation.
Disinformation
Disinformation is false information that is created and shared deliberately to deceive or mislead people. This is the domain of lies and hoaxes that are not accidents, they are weapons. If misinformation is a false alarm, disinformation is a false attack: the person spreading it knows it’s untrue and is doing it on purpose, often to achieve a political, financial, or ideological goal. In disinformation, intent is everything; it’s intentional deception.
For example, think of those professionally crafted fake news stories that pop up around elections. During the 2016 U.S. presidential race, there were numerous fabricated articles circulated on social media (from “Pope Endorses Candidate X” to outrageous conspiracy theories about the candidates). These weren’t rumours or mistakes; they were manufactured lies, sometimes produced by profit-seekers or foreign operatives, explicitly aimed at misleading voters.
Similarly, in the 2017 French election, supporters of Emmanuel Macron’s opponent spread forged documents and fake news stories to undermine Macron. In one case, a website designed to look like a major Belgian newspaper, Le Soir, published a false story claiming Macron was funded by Saudi Arabia. In another, forged documents alleged he had a secret offshore bank account. These items were quickly debunked, but not before the lies had made a splash in the news cycle. The people behind those stories knew they were spreading falsehoods that is disinformation in action.
Africa has seen its share of disinformation as well. In Nigeria’s 2015 elections, a shadowy effort (reportedly involving the consultancy Cambridge Analytica and an Israeli outfit nicknamed “Team Jorge”) orchestrated an online campaign to harass and scare voters away from supporting the opposition candidate. This included fabricated content like a violent, manipulated video designed to stoke fear about the opponent, as well as a torrent of polarising false narratives on social media.
The campaign was covert and malicious, a textbook case of disinformation aimed at influencing an election’s outcome. (Years later, evidence revealed that the same operatives even attempted to hack into that opponent’s emails to find or plant damaging material, blurring the line between disinformation and malinformation.
In essence, disinformation is the art of the lie. It’s propaganda for the digital age where fake “facts” or doctored content are spread with the calculated intent to mislead the audience and often to achieve power or profit. Unlike the misguided sharers of misinformation, the architects of disinformation intend to deceive. They want you to believe and act on false information, whether it’s to win your vote, get your money, or simply cause chaos.
Malinformation
Malinformation is a less talked-about cousin, but extremely important. It refers to information that is true or based on reality, but shared with the intent to cause harm. In malinformation, the content itself isn’t fabricated; it could be a real document, a genuine photo, or a truthful piece of news. What makes it “mal-” (from “malicious”) is the context and motive. The information is deployed like a weapon to damage a person, organisation, or country. It often involves taking something true out of context or revealing private, sensitive information to hurt someone’s reputation or safety.
A vivid example of malinformation is doxxing, when someone’s details (home address, phone number, private photos, etc.) are published online without their consent, to encourage harassment or violence against them. Imagine a journalist or activist who exposes corruption, only to have malicious actors retaliate by leaking her home address and personal emails on Twitter. Even though the address and emails are real, sharing them publicly serves no purpose except to intimidate and harm; that’s malinformation.
One high-profile case of malinformation in politics was the leak of U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private campaign emails in 2016. Those emails were genuine (not fake), but they were stolen and released strategically to hurt her reputation and influence the election. The content was real, yet it was weaponised, making it malinformation
To bring in the Nigerian context, during Nigeria’s 2015 election, the same disinformation operatives we discussed earlier reportedly didn’t stop at spreading lies. They also tried to dig up authentic dirt. According to whistleblowers, Cambridge Analytica and its partners obtained hacked data that included medical records of then-candidate Muhammadu Buhari, who was running for president. Their goal was to find any real details about Buhari’s health that could be twisted into an election smear, for instance, suggesting he was unfit or secretly ill. Leaking a rival’s private medical information crosses into malinformation territory: the records themselves are real, but exposing them is intended purely to damage the person. (In the end, Buhari won the election despite these underhanded tactics.)
In summary, malinformation is truth used as a weapon. It encompasses things like exposing someone’s private correspondence, sharing genuine photos or videos out of context to create a false impression, or selectively publicising facts that are only meant to harm. Unlike misinformation or disinformation, malinformation doesn’t involve lies, but it is malicious information. It reminds us that even truth can be twisted when it’s yanked out of its proper context or circulated with ill intent
Summary of Differences
To recap the trio: while all three terms involve problematic information, they differ in intent and truthfulness of content. An easy way to remember is:
- Misinformation: False information, but shared without intent to harm or mislead. (The sharer typically believes it’s true or is just careless.) It’s essentially a mistake or misunderstanding that spreads.
- Disinformation: False information that is deliberately fabricated or shared with the intent to deceive and cause harm. (The creator knows it’s a lie.) It’s an intentional falsehood propaganda, hoaxes, fake news, designed to mislead.
- Malinformation: True information that is shared publicly to inflict harm. (It often involves private or sensitive material put into the public sphere maliciously.) It’s reality used out of context as a weapon.
All three are part of what some researchers call the “information disorder” affecting the world today. They often overlap – for example, a disinformation campaign might use some malinformation (like a real leaked document) mixed with lies, or misinformation can be picked up and amplified by bad actors into disinformation. But understanding the nuance is important. If we misdiagnose a case of deliberate disinformation as mere misinformation, we might respond too softly. Conversely, treating an honest mistake the same as an orchestrated lie could unfairly vilify people who meant no harm.
We live in a time when a lie can travel from one person’s social media post to millions of screens in a flash. But as we’ve explored, not all problematic information travels for the same reasons. Sometimes it’s a mistake that goes viral (misinformation), sometimes it’s a deliberate lie injected into the conversation (disinformation), and sometimes it’s the ugly use of truth to hurt someone (malinformation). Understanding these differences isn’t just semantic nit-picking – it’s a tool for keeping our information ecosystem healthier.
So, what can we do with this understanding? For one, we can all become more savvy consumers and sharers of information. The next time you encounter a sensational headline on Facebook or a forwarded message on WhatsApp claiming some shocking “fact,” take a moment to ask yourself: What am I looking at? Is it possibly misinformation, maybe an old photo or a claim that has been debunked elsewhere? Or does it look like disinformation, a story that smells fishy, from an unknown source, possibly designed to push an agenda? If it’s urging me to spread someone’s personal details or a private video, am I about to participate in malinformation and potentially harm someone? By pausing and categorising, we might save ourselves from being unwitting vectors of false or harmful content.
Secondly, when you correct a friend or family member, tailor the response to the situation. If your aunt shares a bogus health tip (misinformation), you might gently provide her a link to a credible source debunking it, emphasising you know she meant well and wants everyone to be safe. If you see a deliberate hoax being spread (disinformation), call it out, label it as false, report it to the platform if appropriate, and share credible information to counter it. For malinformation, say someone is circulating a leaked personal photo out of context, show empathy for the victim and remind others that just because something is true doesn’t mean it’s fair game to share. In all cases, encourage critical thinking: “How do we know this is true? Where did it come from? What’s the evidence?”
The story of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation is still being written. In a sense, it’s a battle for reality, a contest to ensure that our shared public discourse is based on facts and good-faith arguments, not lies and manipulation. Each of us is a character in this story because what we choose to read, believe, and share determines the ending. By knowing the differences between these three ugly cousins of “fake news,” we arm ourselves with clarity. We become less likely to be fooled or used as tools in someone else’s agenda. Instead, we can become guardians of the truth in our circles.
The next time a wild story comes across your screen, remember the tale of the three M’s – mis-, dis, and mal. Each has its telltale signs. With a bit of scepticism, a bit of fact-checking, and an understanding of why false information spreads, you’ll be better equipped to separate the signal from the noise. In a world where information is power, we all deserve the power of truth. Let’s use it wisely.
