Misinformation is false or inaccurate information spread without the intent to deceive. In the Wardle–Derakhshan (2017) framework it is the good-faith sibling of disinformation: the content is equally wrong, but the person sharing it believes it is true or does not realize it is false. It covers honest errors, misremembered facts, premature “breaking news,” satire mistaken for reporting, and real images or stories recirculated out of their original time and place. It is by far the highest-volume form of false information because it needs no coordination or malice — ordinary people, acting sincerely, do the spreading.
Its engine is the same set of cognitive shortcuts that malicious actors exploit deliberately. The illusory-truth effect (Hasher, Fazio, and colleagues) means that the more often a claim is encountered — even across unrelated, sincere sharers — the more true it feels, independent of accuracy. Social trust amplifies this: when a claim arrives from a friend or family member, their credibility silently transfers to it, so we scrutinize it far less than we would a stranger’s assertion. Emotional and surprising content travels fastest, and moments of high uncertainty — disasters, elections, fast-moving crises — flood networks with unverified claims exactly when people most want answers. Crucially, misinformation is also the delivery system for disinformation: a deliberate falsehood succeeds precisely when enough sincere people pick it up and pass it along, at which point it is indistinguishable, in the feed, from an honest mistake.
Because there is no manipulator to unmask, the defense is behavioral and personal: become a reliable node rather than an amplifier. The core discipline is to verify before sharing — trace a striking claim to a primary or reputable source in the few seconds before forwarding, since your share lends it your credibility to everyone downstream. Be especially cautious with breaking news, where early information is routinely wrong, and check the date and context of images and stories before assuming they are current. Recognize that a claim feeling familiar is the illusory-truth effect, not evidence. And when errors do spread — including your own — correct them gently and with sources; research on corrections shows that non-shaming, evidence-based fixes work better than hostile call-outs, which tend to entrench the mistake rather than undo it.