Professor Tom Buchanan, Professor of Psychology, was interviewed by The Psychologist to talk about his research on misinformation and the false information universe.
In the article, The Psychologist spoke to Professor Buchanan about misinformation and disinformation. He said: “There are big questions about the nature of truth, but there’s a common distinction in the literature between misinformation and disinformation. Disinformation is essentially material that is shared in the full knowledge that is untrue…but that’s deliberately telling lies. Misinformation is material that people share or spread in the belief that it’s true, even though it isn’t. They’re mistaken about it.”
He added: “Because of that ambiguity around the person’s motives, I prefer to talk about false information, which can either be disinformation or misinformation depending on the context.”
Talking about how easy it is to be at risk of misinformation, he said: “You have probably done it yourself, just by clicking on something on Twitter or Facebook that seemed plausible at the time, but then with hindsight, may not have been. You don’t have to actually share to it on order to boost the signal because of how social media platforms work. Even if you spend time looking at it, your dwell time on the page is high. That causes algorithms to kick in, and then show it to some other people…We are all part of the problem.”
Read the full interview on The Psychologist website.
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