One of the most productive sources of vaccine misinformation, Doctores por la Verdad, or Doctors for Truth, seems to have started in Spain and moved to Argentina and a dozen other countries to spread myths that eventually reached the United States. The executive branch of the Reagan administration has observed disinformation campaigns through three annual State Department publications: Active Actions: A Report on the Substance and Process of the Anti-U.S. Administration. disinformation and propaganda campaigns (1986); Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1986-87 (1987); and Report on Active Action and Propaganda, 1987-88 (1989). [10] The extent of Soviet disinformation campaigns was revealed by the defections of KGB officers and allied officers from the Eastern Bloc from the late 1960s to the 1980s. [29] Stanislav Levchenko and Ilya Dzerbalilov were among the Soviet defectors. By 1990, the two men had written books detailing their work on disinformation operations for the KGB. [29] Archival documents revealed in the mess of the fall of the Soviet Union later corroborated his testimony. [28] Disinformation is “false information that is disseminated regardless of intent to mislead.” Put a flag in the second half of this definition; That will be important later. From: Disinformation in a Media and Communication Dictionary » Information has real consequences.
It can literally save lives – if it`s true. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. False information can cause great damage. As with a virus, false information can spread, leading to a so-called infodemic. Whether and to what extent these terms overlap is controversial. Some (such as the U.S. Department of State) define propaganda as the use of non-rational arguments to advance or undermine a political ideal, and use disinformation as an alternative name to undermine propaganda. [35] Others see them as concepts in their own right. [36] A popular distinction is that disinformation also describes politically motivated messages that explicitly aim to create public cynicism, insecurity, apathy, mistrust, and paranoia, all of which hinder citizen engagement and mobilization for social or political change. [14] In English, the prefix dis- can be used to indicate an inversion or negative occurrence of the following word. For example, disrespect and disobedience are opposites or negations of respect and obedience.
Disinformation can then be understood as “reverse information” or “anti-information” specifically created to deceive and mislead others. Today, as in the 1940s, we face dangerous concentrations of irresponsible media power and associated misinformation about public health, elections, riots and other life-and-death issues. U.S. intelligence adopted the term Russian Dezinformatsiya disinformation in the 1950s and began employing similar strategies.[10][84] during the Cold War and in conflicts with other nations. [11] The New York Times reported in 2000 that the CIA had published fictional stories in the local newspaper during the CIA`s efforts to replace Mohammed Reza Pahlavi with then-Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. [11] Reuters documented how, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 during the Soviet-Afghan War, the CIA published false articles in newspapers in Islamic-majority countries falsely claiming that Soviet embassies held “Day of Invasion celebrations.” [11] Reuters noted that a former U.S. intelligence officer said they would seek to gain the trust of journalists and use them as secret agents to influence a nation`s politics through their local media. [11] He said the news of his appointment was not true, it was disinformation spread by “an intelligence agency and my rivals.” Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former senior Romanian secret police official, said the word was coined by Joseph Stalin and used during World War II. [11] [1] The Stalinist government then used disinformation tactics during World War II and the Cold War. [24] Soviet intelligence used the term Maskirovka (Russian military deception) to refer to a combination of tactics such as disinformation, simulation, camouflage and obfuscation.
[25] Pacepa and Ronald J. Rychlak wrote a book called Disinformation, in which Pacepa wrote that Stalin gave tactics a French-sounding title to argue that it was a technique used by the Western world. [1] Pacepa recounted how, while working as an intelligence officer, he read Soviet textbooks that characterized disinformation as a Russian government strategy that had early origins in Russian history. [11] [1] Pacepa recalled that Soviet textbooks said that the origins of disinformation came from fake cities built by Grigory Potemkin in the Crimea to delight Catherine the Great during her trip to the region in 1783 – later called Potemkin villages. [11] [1] During the 2016 and 2020 elections, the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS) was an integral part of Putin`s and the Kremlin`s disinformation efforts.