Skip to content

Lexicon of Lies: Terms for Problematic Information

Author: Caroline Jack
Organization: Data & Society Research Institute, 2024

TL;DR

Words matter in describing problematic information. This guide clarifies distinctions between misinformation (unintentional inaccuracy), disinformation (deliberate deception), propaganda, publicity, gaslighting, and related terms. Many key terms have blurred boundaries and overlapping meanings—intent, intentionality, and context determine classification, yet these are often difficult to assess. The guide helps journalists, researchers, and communicators use terminology precisely to avoid misrepresenting phenomena and inadvertently legitimizing manipulation.

Core distinctions

The guide unpacks the terminology landscape around problematic information:

  • Misinformation — information whose inaccuracy is unintentional. Example: the Chicago Daily Tribune's mistaken early report of Dewey's defeat of Truman in 1948. Intent is absent, but harm can still occur.

  • Disinformation — information that is deliberately false or misleading. Example: false reports of explosions at Columbian Chemicals manufacturing plant, spread via coordinated fake Twitter accounts, spoofed news websites, and text messages. Deliberately orchestrated deception.

  • Propaganda, advertising, public relations, public diplomacy — systematic persuasion campaigns conducted through mass media. Advertising and PR are common and often transparent about their source. Public diplomacy (nation-branding) aims to improve a state's reputation internationally. Information operations, a military term, refers to unidentified or covert attempts to manipulate public opinion.

  • Information operations — a military term appropriated by platforms like Facebook to describe unidentified actors' deliberate attempts to steer public opinion via inauthentic accounts and false information. The term obscures intentionality by framing campaigns as technical phenomena.

  • Gaslighting — orchestrated deceptions designed to undermine trust in a target's own judgment and perceptions. Coined from the 1938 play, now applied to political contexts—e.g., the Trump administration's documented falsehoods and denial of obvious facts.

  • Xuanchuan — Chinese term (宣传) for spreading information broadly; carries no inherent connotations of deception or manipulation, but refers more broadly to information dissemination. Its adoption in English risks conflating propaganda with public communication.

  • Dezinformatsiya — Soviet-era concept of coordinated state disinformation to undermine adversaries' media authority and relations with publics. Related to "active measures" (aktivnye meropriyatiya) for systematic destabilization.

  • Satire, parody, culture jamming, hoax — forms in which fabricated or exaggerated information is presented intentionally to critique, amuse, or convey cultural commentary. Intent to deceive may be absent or secondary. Example: New York Sun's 1835 "Moon Hoax" was financially motivated but became a historical example of sensationalism.

Central insight: perspective matters

Whether a campaign is labeled publicity, propaganda, information operations, or advertising often depends on the observer's perspective and professional standards. The same campaign can be framed as legitimate public diplomacy by one actor and condemned as propaganda by critics. Lines between neutral persuasion and deceptive manipulation blur in practice:

  • Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" blended advertising with body-positivity messaging; some feminist scholars critiqued it as propaganda for a narrower beauty standard disguised as inclusivity.
  • ExxonMobil's 1980s "advertorials" in the New York Times positioned the company as an energy expert; journalism scholars traced how this blurred commercial and editorial authority.
  • Ukraine nation-branding via Eurovision, CNN partnerships, and weather map placements (Kyiv prominently shown) conflate public diplomacy with soft power manipulation.

Computational systems (algorithmic amplification, trending topics) can incentivize the spread of misinformation or disinformation without intent to deceive, complicating attribution of intent.

Cross-cultural challenges

Borrowing terms from other languages and contexts risks inadvertently reinforcing stereotypes or misleading English-language audiences:

  • Xuanchuan in Chinese can refer to government messaging that is not inherently deceptive but may carry negative associations in English when misapplied.
  • Dezinformatsiya specifically indexes Soviet/Russian state operations, which can imply all Russian information activities are deceptive (historically true in Cold War contexts but risks overgeneralization).
  • Using non-English terms without cultural context can reinforce "othering" of non-Western information practices.

Methodological implications

The guide's core argument is that imprecise terminology can:

  • Obscure actual mechanisms of information spread (distinguishing coordinated campaigns from algorithmic amplification from organic sharing).
  • Conflate distinct phenomena, making interventions less effective (media literacy doesn't address coordinated disinformation).
  • Create power imbalances: deceptive actors can exploit ambiguous terminology to deny intent, while critics struggle to establish it.
  • Shape policy and moderation decisions in ways that reflect the observer's perspective rather than the phenomenon's actual characteristics.

Connections

Notes

This is a practitioner-focused guide rather than empirical research, designed to help journalists, educators, advocates, and policymakers use terminology precisely. The report's strength is its honest acknowledgment of terminological ambiguity: many key concepts don't have mutually exclusive definitions, and intent/intentionality are notoriously difficult to establish in networked media contexts. The guide emphasizes that word choice has political and methodological consequences—the language we use shapes assumptions about who spreads what, why, and what interventions seem appropriate. The section on cross-cultural borrowing is particularly valuable, warning against unreflective use of terms from other languages without adequate contextual grounding. Notably, the guide does not prescribe "correct" usage but instead clarifies the stakes of each choice, empowering readers to make informed decisions about terminology in their own work.