How Disinformation becomes Misinformation?

An American writer ‘Mark Twain’ said, “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up it’s boots” and so applies to news and information on social media nowadays. If you are using social media websites or applications, then you should be careful before sharing any information because maybe you too are contributing to spreading false news even without realizing. Oftenly false news spreads like bushfire on social media because most people share either any or every news without bothering themselves to know the fact and true incident and then Disinformation becomes Misinformation.

Disinformation is false information that is spreaded deliberately to mislead people and Misinformation is false information that people share  without realizing that the information is false.

It is very surprising that even when people can reach to the true information with a little bit of research and digging on the internet, they still keep falling for it. People have a lot of reasons to share false information. Some people just share the  information that they agree with, some people do this deliberately to create troubles and others just don’t know that what they are sharing is false. It should be understood that how they can better spot it, because sharing information that has no genuine source can have real consequences.

People should be sceptical of news that they see on social media, especially when those issues and topics are the ground of debate. First, people should check the source of that information and ask themselves, “Is this source reliable?”. If that source is not reliable, they should confirm that information from any reliable source or website and if they found that information false or misleading, they should report the platform they see it on. But here is a problem, not everyone has the time and will to do this kind of sleuthing and here, that person should stop. That chain of forwarding false and misleading information should be broken there.  It has to be understood that if people can’t investigate the information then they should not share that with anyone. If people share any information without investing it, it would be nothing but a sort of stupidity. 

By sharing misinformation, people contribute to political agendas of people who will make a game of their religious and political beliefs and spread hate among us all.

As the world is getting more connected, we all must have a very strong sense of responsibility towards our society. This is time to take a step towards making us more careful and break this web of Disinformation and Misinformation.