International Council for Media Literacy

Bridging Academia to Action

International Council for Media Literacy
Bridging Academia to Action

The Colors of Disinformation: Disinformation and the Literacy Landscape

by

Abstract

We are now living in an age of “fake news,” which is not a new phenomenon, but its current iteration has highlighted the various dimensions of how people interact (or do not) with information – information consumption is so much more than people’s immediate cognitive processing. This video essay will address some of the colloquial language that can be applied to discussions of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. Not only are there numerous words and concepts for misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (e.g., hoaxes, gossip, alternative facts, etc.), there are many phrases, rooted in our visual literacy of color, that can be applied to our understanding of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation and their historical entrenchment in our everyday language. After detailing a variety of colorful applications of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, the essay will present media and information literacy considerations such as people’s emotional reactions to information, political economy, and technology as context that makes misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation instruction and research both complex, challenging, and so interesting.

Keywords

Misinformation, Disinformation, Malinformation, Literacies, Fake News, Lexicon, Information Literacy, Media Literacy, Affective Information Behavior

Key Quotes

  • We need to be mindful of the language that’s used to think about and discuss misinformation, disinformation, and malformation.
  • Information is fast and cheap, but knowledge is slow and expensive.
  • The more context we have about information, the better chance we have of making good decisions with the information we are presented with.

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  • Augusta Baker Endowed Chair and a Professor University of South Carolina

    Nicole A. Cooke is the Augusta Baker Endowed Chair and a Professor at the University of South Carolina. Her research and teaching interests include human information behavior, critical cultural information studies, and diversity and social justice in librarianship. She was the 2019 Association of Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Excellence in Teaching Award recipient and the 2021 MLK Social Justice Award presented by the University of South Carolina. She has edited and authored several books, including Information Services to Diverse Populations and Fake News and Alternative Facts: Information Literacy in a Post-truth Era.

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