The Laundering Of Information: When Disinformation Becomes Misinformation
Intent matters.
False information moves faster today than ever before.
We understand the difference between innocent mistakes (misinformation) and deliberate lies (disinformation). But we know less about why one turns into the other.
This shift—when deliberate deception becomes innocent sharing—deserves our attention and analysis.
Our digital world makes this transformation easy. A lie planted by can quickly become a belief shared by regular people who have no idea where it started. Even here on Substack, information is much more quickly than during World War II.
Importantly, this transformation process serves strategic purposes for disinformation creators. When deliberately deceptive content transforms into sincerely shared misinformation, it achieves broader reach. It also becomes much harder to debunk. The content sheds its suspicious origins while maintaining its core narrative and is often empowered by goodwill.
This laundering effect is not an unintended consequence but often a design feature. After all, disinformation architects benefit when their creations become "naturalized" as seemingly organic concerns.
This discussion explores the key factors that allow deliberately deceptive content to shed its origins and become widely shared misconceptions. Understanding these patterns matters for everyone who cares about having a healthier information environment.
Why Disinformation Becomes Misinformation: Key Drivers
When false information travels through our media landscape, it rarely stays the same. Several key factors explain why content created to deceive transforms into content that people share innocently.
First, digital platforms strip away context. When someone shares content, the original source often disappears. A screenshot loses its timestamp. A headline travels without its article. This "context collapse" makes it laborious to trace content back to its origins.
Second, trust networks amplify this problem. We believe information from people we trust. Each sharing creates another layer between the content and its source. By the time it reaches you, deceptive content appears to come from a trusted source.
Third, our psychology makes us vulnerable. We pay more attention to information that confirms existing beliefs or triggers strong emotions. Once it fits our worldview, we share it because we genuinely believe it matters.
Fourth, today's information spreads at unprecedented speed. Content can reach millions before fact-checkers notice. This rapid spread creates an illusion of consensus. There is so much data that our brains have yet been able to comprehend it. Furthermore, if everyone's talking about it, it must be true.
Finally, our fragmented media environment creates separate information worlds. Content circulates within closed communities before moving outward, carrying the weight of "common knowledge" despite its deceptive origins.
These factors combine to create an environment for disinformation to transform into misinformation, explaining why labelling content as "false" often fails.
Transformation Mechanisms: How the Process Works
The journey from deliberate deception to innocent sharing follows specific paths. Four key mechanisms drive this transformation:
Platform Migration Pathways: False information jumps between platforms. From closed messaging apps to open media, from fringe forums to mainstream sites. Each jump distances content from its deceptive source. Health disinformation typically starts on specialized websites before reaching platforms where regular users share it in an attempt to help others.
Authority Acquisition: Deceptive content gains legitimacy by appearing to come from trusted sources. Mainstream outlets report on claims "circulating online," inadvertently lends credibility. Academic papers get misrepresented as they move from journals to headlines to social posts, with limitations removed and claims appearing scientifically backed.
Narrative Incorporation: False information that fits existing beliefs becomes harder to detect. People integrate new information into what they already "know." Political fabrications that confirm existing views about politicians quickly become absorbed into broader narratives, appearing as just another example of an established pattern.
Emotional Drivers: Content triggering fear, anger, or moral outrage travels faster and transforms more readily. Engagement is not a social media phenomenon, but the platforms really leveraged them. A deliberately created rumour about vaccine side effects sparks parental fear. As worried parents share it, motivation shifts from deception to genuine concern.
These mechanisms follow predictable patterns that vary by content type and context, explaining why simple corrections often fail.
Psychological Dimensions: Why We Believe and Share
Our minds have natural tendencies that make us vulnerable to transformed disinformation. These psychological factors explain why smart, well-meaning people spread false information.
Evolutionary Foundations: Humans evolved as social creatures where information sharing provided survival advantages. Research suggests our ancestors evolved cognitive tendencies favouring information-sharing, where false alarms typically carried lower survival costs than missed warnings. This is a pattern reflected in modern information behaviours. This asymmetry still influences our behaviour today, even for abstract threats.
Motivated Reasoning: We process information to protect existing beliefs. When content matches what we already believe, we require less evidence to accept it. Once disinformation aligns with our worldview, we share it without the scrutiny we'd apply to contradictory claims.
Cognitive Shortcuts: Information overload forces our brains to use shortcuts. Social proof leads us to believe what many others seem to believe. Familiarity bias makes claims we've heard before feel more truthful, even if initially labelled as false. These shortcuts served us throughout history but create vulnerabilities in today's information environment.
Trust Networks: We trust information from our social groups, often bypassing critical thinking. Questioning content from family or friends can feel like questioning the relationship itself. People share not to deceive but to participate in group identity.
Emotional Processing: Strong emotions override analytical thinking. Content triggering fear, anger, or outrage activates our threat-response system. When emotionally engaged, we share information without verification because it feels urgent and important.
These factors explain why disinformation so readily becomes misinformation. When false content triggers these natural tendencies, people share it sincerely, believing they're spreading important truth.
Case Study: Tracking Transformation in Action
To see how disinformation becomes misinformation, let's examine the "Microchip Vaccine" narrative from 2020.
Origins: The claim began when conspiracy content creators deliberately connected unrelated statements about digital health certificates with existing surveillance fears. Early posts showed careful crafting of misleading connections between Bill Gates, vaccines, and tracking technology. Creators later admitted their intent to undermine vaccine acceptance. This is clearly disinformation.
The claim evolved through four key phases:
Platform Migration: The claim moved from conspiracy forums in March to Facebook in April, where posts mentioning "vaccine microchips" increased 1,400% in two weeks.
Attribution Loss: Early posts cited specific sources. Later shares simply stated "I heard that..." without attribution.
Emotional Shift: Initial posts used language of revelation ("what they don't want you to know"). Later shares expressed concern ("I'm worried about this").
Mainstream Adoption: By May 2020, 28% of Americans believed the claim might be true. Most sharing came from users with no history of spreading conspiracy theories.
By June 2020, the claim had fully transformed. Content analysis showed 72% of sharers expressed genuine worry rather than deception. Content created with clear deceptive intent had become sincere, though false, belief.
This case illustrates each mechanism we've discussed: platform migration, authority acquisition, narrative incorporation, and emotional drivers. It explains why labelling it simply as "false information" proved ineffective.
Beyond True and False
The journey from disinformation to misinformation reveals that false content transforms as it spreads. It changes hands, loses context, and shifts from deliberate deception to sincere sharing. It is information laundering at a rate and intent that no one can really track.
This transformation explains why fact-checking alone often fails. When people share false information because they genuinely believe it, labelling it "false" doesn't address their underlying concerns or psychological drivers.
Understanding this process offers practical insights:
Early intervention is crucial. Systems that preserve information provenance help trace content to its origins.
Addressing psychological and social drivers of sharing proves more effective than content-focused approaches alone.
Most people sharing misinformation aren't trying to deceive—they're responding to perceived threats using the architecture of our thinking. Effective responses must address not just what people share, but why they share it.
By understanding how harmful content transforms, we can build information environments that support both accuracy and our human need to share what matters.