Information misbehaviour: modelling the motivations for the creation, acceptance and dissemination of misinformation
| Date | 21 September 2022 |
| Pages | 485-505 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-05-2022-0116 |
| Published date | 21 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Thomas D. Wilson,Elena Maceviciute |
Information misbehaviour:
modelling the motivations for the
creation, acceptance and
dissemination of misinformation
Thomas D. Wilson
Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of Bor
as,
Bor
as, Sweden, and
Elena Maceviciute
Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of Bor
as,
Bor
as, Sweden and
Faculty of Communication, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania
Abstract
Purpose –Misinformationis a significant phenomenon in today’s world: the purposeof this paper is to explore
the motivations behind the creation and use of misinformation.
Design/methodology/approach –A literature review was undertaken, covering the English and Russian
language sources. Content analysis was used to identify the different kinds of motivation relating to the stages
of creating and communicating misinformation. The authors applied Schutz’s analysis of motivational types.
Findings –The main types of motivation for creating and facilitating misinformation were identified as “in-order-
tomotivations”,i.e. seeking to bring about some desired state, whereas the motivations for using and, to a significant
extent, sharing misinformation were “because”motivations, i.e. rooted in the individual’s personal history.
Originality/value –The general model of the motivations underlying misinformation is original as is the
application of Schutz’s typification of motivations to the different stages in the creation,dissemination and use
of misinformation.
Keywords Misinformation, Information behaviour, Motivation
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Fordecades researchershave been exploringhow we interact with information; varioustheories
have been used, from activity theory to practice theory and independent theories have been
evolved to explain various aspects of this interaction (e.g. a general information behaviour
theory(Wilson, 2016); everyday lifeinformationseeking (Savolainen, 1995); the emotional side of
informationsearch (Kuhlthau, 2004;Nahl andBilal, 2007); relevance(Saracevic, 2007); and task-
based searching (Vakkari, 1999), etc.). The information behaviour of many actors in different
situationsis known, but what do we know abouthow we behave in relation to misinformation?
Our aim is todiscover what reasonsmotivate people to createand disseminate misinformation
and to propose a theoretical framework for the furtherexploration of the phenomenon.
Misinformation
485
© Thomas D. Wilson and Elena Maceviciute. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is
published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce,
distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial
purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence
may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
No funding was received for the preparation of this paper.
The authors thank Professor Reijo Savolainen for helpful comments on an earlier version of this
paper and the anonymous referees for further comments that have resulted in improvements to the text.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 22 May 2022
Revised 13 August 2022
Accepted 21 August 2022
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 78 No. 7, 2022
pp. 485-505
Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-05-2022-0116
The earliest use of the word misinformation, according to the Oxford English Dictionary
(2022), where it is defined as “Wrong or misleading information”, is in 1605, while
disinformation is of more recent origin: being defined by the OED as: “The dissemination of
deliberately false information, esp. when supplied by a government or its agent to a foreign
power or to the media, with the intention of influencing the policies or opinions of those who
receive it.”and the earliest quotation is from 1955.
In a paper on algorithmic methods for thedetection of misinformation and disinformation, Søe
concludes similarly: “More specifically, I define misinformation as unintended misleadingness,
inaccuracy, or falsity, whereas disinformation is defined as intentional misleadingness,
inaccuracy, or falsity.”(Søe, 2018,p.321–322). We can also add a definition of “fake news”as
news containing false or misleading content spread by fake news distributors with the intention
to deceive or being indifferent to the truth, imitating journalistic formats of real news, deceiving
the audience and disseminated virally through the onlinemedia, which we have found in English
and Russian language research (Jester and Lanius, 2021;pp.26–27; Galyashina, 2021,p.18).
MisinformationhascometoprominencemainlyasaresultoftheliesofformerUSPresident,
Donald Trump and his Republican supporters. We also see disinformation elevated to the status
of state propaganda in Russian TV and officially demanded lies from all other media and even
private citizens in relation to Russia’swaragainstUkraine.Butthepracticeisnotnew;the
production of documents to deceive goes back to ancient Mesopotamia, where fake wills were the
subject of court cases (Michel, 2020). In Russia, Abraham Firkowich (1787–1874), invented a new
history for Jews and Karaites [a Jewish sect] so well that he achieved the protection of the Karaite
population from persecution (Shapira, 2020). The state sanctioned propaganda based on
disinformation wasobserved during WorldWar I and World WarII, as well as in the era of the
Cold War (Bennet, 2020). In fact, itwas Adolf Hitler who explained how the “big lie”functions:
in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of nation are more
easily corruped in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and
thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the
small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to
large-scale falsehoods. (Hitler, 1939, Ch. X)
One of the problems of distinguishing information and misinformation was identified by an
information scientist, Christopher Fox, who applied analytic philosophy to these two terms.
He established that both information and misinformation, “need not be believed by anyone”,
both “need not originate with a reliable informant ... but with someone in an appropriate
position to know”. Furthermore, he found that “information need not be true, though
misinformation must be false”(Fox, 1983, p. 12). This makes it quite problematic to
distinguish between the two, especially, as misinformation may be unintentional, i.e. the
originator may believe it to be true.
Other authors in different disciplines have supplied other definitions of these concepts or
different relationships between them (see, e.g. Watzlawick, 1977;Karlova and Fisher, 2013;
Vraga and Bode, 2020;orSunstein, 2021), but we will stick with the simple definitions of these
concepts presented above.
Having in mind these definitions, we suggest using the term misinformation as the widest
one, including all kinds of false content, whether intended or not and regardless of the format
and channel of its dissemination. Disinformation and “fake news”both are limited in some
way, the first by being intentionally spread as false information, the second as spread in a
particular format imitating reliable messages. We focus on the existing research in the light of
what it says about the information misbehaviour of involved actors and, in particular, about
the reasons for such misbehaviour. In this respect we do not include in the concept of
misinformation fantasy, science fiction, satirical or humorous and similar messages that are
clearly visible and understood as a particular type or genre of information.
JD
78,7
486
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