Thanks for the semantic breakdown! Another aspect: When encountering false or inaccurate information, it is crucial to distinguish between misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation refers to inaccurate content spread without malicious intent, often due to misunderstanding or lack of verification. Disinformation, on the other hand, involves the deliberate creation and dissemination of false or misleading information with the intention to deceive or manipulate.
Yeah ... even the maliciousness itself had to be pinpointed more precisely. I think some people or organizations are aware that their messages are slanted, but they think they are doing it for a good cause. So, the intent may be noble, but the consequence malicious.
Intentional misinformation is often called disinformation. But I think it's even more complicated than that. There is a competence vs. incompetence. Awareness vs. unawareness. Meaning well vs. meaning ill. I think most people mean well and are still aware that their message has a strong slant. Or you can have people who are convinced their message is truthful but are blind to their limitations/ignorance. I think we all tend to navigate through different states of this space.
Correct! Intentional misinformation is often called disinformation. But I think it's even more complicated than that. There is a competence vs. incompetence. Awareness vs. unawareness. Meaning well vs. meaning ill. I think most people mean well and are still aware that their message has a strong slant. Or you can have people who are convinced their message is truthful but are blind to their limitations/ignorance. I think we all tend to navigate through different states of this space.
I understand that. If it is about the intention, it means the emitter is able to predict the effect of its message to be/do "bad" somewhere down the communication pipeline, and knowing that, decide to emit the message. But it seems to me that being able to predict means having the competence/awareness about the information and of its potential audience (a model of the audience) and of course meaning bad to decide to emit it for that reason. It seems that all these concepts form some sort of hierarchy or ontology; they are not all at the same level. I am not an expert in that field anyway, it is pretty likely it has been studied in depth in information science, so it could be "misleading" to change the standard terminology (mis/dis) although I can see the benefit of the symmetry you highlight. Definitely worthy of study the specifics of these concepts in visualization, though, beyond the visualization design failures and uncertainty visualization approaches.
Thanks for the semantic breakdown! Another aspect: When encountering false or inaccurate information, it is crucial to distinguish between misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation refers to inaccurate content spread without malicious intent, often due to misunderstanding or lack of verification. Disinformation, on the other hand, involves the deliberate creation and dissemination of false or misleading information with the intention to deceive or manipulate.
Yeah ... even the maliciousness itself had to be pinpointed more precisely. I think some people or organizations are aware that their messages are slanted, but they think they are doing it for a good cause. So, the intent may be noble, but the consequence malicious.
Useful and provocative! Misinterpretation can be due to bad design. Bad design can include intentional misdirection or unintentional misdirection.
Misinformation arising from malice is likely rarer than misinformation due to a producer pushing an argument they have little evidence for.
See my reply to Michael. Reporting it here ...
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Intentional misinformation is often called disinformation. But I think it's even more complicated than that. There is a competence vs. incompetence. Awareness vs. unawareness. Meaning well vs. meaning ill. I think most people mean well and are still aware that their message has a strong slant. Or you can have people who are convinced their message is truthful but are blind to their limitations/ignorance. I think we all tend to navigate through different states of this space.
Also made me think of the difference between unintended consequences and unexpected consequences. (Really fun 'Cautionary Tales' podcast episode on them: https://timharford.com/2022/11/cautionary-tales-the-inventor-who-almost-ended-the-world/)
Made me think of misinformation as an encoding problem and misinterpretation as a decoding problem. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encoding/decoding_model_of_communication
One perspective might be that misinterpretation is often the result of poor encoding choices.
I was not aware of the Hall model! Super interesting! Robert Kosara has been looking into encoding/decoding in visualization: https://eagereyes.org/blog/2017/encoding-vs-decoding.
Nice and clear analysis. In item 5, I think we say disinformation when the intention is bad from the emitter. https://www.britannica.com/topic/misinformation-and-disinformation
In item 6, Misinformation requires the receiver/consumer trusts the emitter/producer?
Correct! Intentional misinformation is often called disinformation. But I think it's even more complicated than that. There is a competence vs. incompetence. Awareness vs. unawareness. Meaning well vs. meaning ill. I think most people mean well and are still aware that their message has a strong slant. Or you can have people who are convinced their message is truthful but are blind to their limitations/ignorance. I think we all tend to navigate through different states of this space.
I understand that. If it is about the intention, it means the emitter is able to predict the effect of its message to be/do "bad" somewhere down the communication pipeline, and knowing that, decide to emit the message. But it seems to me that being able to predict means having the competence/awareness about the information and of its potential audience (a model of the audience) and of course meaning bad to decide to emit it for that reason. It seems that all these concepts form some sort of hierarchy or ontology; they are not all at the same level. I am not an expert in that field anyway, it is pretty likely it has been studied in depth in information science, so it could be "misleading" to change the standard terminology (mis/dis) although I can see the benefit of the symmetry you highlight. Definitely worthy of study the specifics of these concepts in visualization, though, beyond the visualization design failures and uncertainty visualization approaches.