Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information — false content put into circulation without an intent to deceive, generally by people who believe it is true.
Intent is the entire distinction that organizes this word's neighborhood. Misinformation is false and unintentional; 📝disinformation is false and deliberate; 📝malinformation is factually true but deployed to harm. The same claim can occupy all three positions across its life: a fabrication seeded knowingly is disinformation at the source and becomes misinformation the moment a sincere person forwards it. Because intent lives in the sender rather than in the sentence, nothing can be sorted from the text alone — which is why fact-checking a claim settles whether it is false without settling what to call it, and why the label draws accusations of overreach when applied to sincere error.
The word is mis- plus information and is centuries older than the current debate; what is new is its institutional weight. Public health agencies, election administrators, and disaster responders now treat misinformation as an operational hazard, and the World Health Organization coined "infodemic" for its overabundance during a health emergency. It moves through 📝Social Media platforms, messaging apps, search, and ordinary word of mouth, amplified by algorithmic ranking and by cognitive biases including confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. Standard countermeasures are fact-checking, "prebunking" or inoculation, media literacy programs, and product friction such as forwarding limits, with policy guidance from bodies including UNESCO and the EU's Code of Practice on Disinformation. Documented harms include depressed vaccination uptake and degraded emergency response.