Talk:Disinformation

Skip to table of contents

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Disinformation article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1: 3 months

Disinformation was a Warfare good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 18, 2017	Guild of Copy Editors	Copyedited
February 15, 2017	Good article nominee	Not listed
January 22, 2017	Guild of Copy Editors	Copyedited

Current status: Former good article nominee

Espionage High‑importance

	Disinformation is within the scope of WikiProject Espionage, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of espionage, intelligence, and related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page, or contribute to the discussion.EspionageWikipedia:WikiProject EspionageTemplate:WikiProject EspionageEspionage
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

International relations High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject International relations, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of International relations on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.International relationsWikipedia:WikiProject International relationsTemplate:WikiProject International relationsInternational relations
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Journalism High‑importance

	Journalism portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Journalism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of journalism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.JournalismWikipedia:WikiProject JournalismTemplate:WikiProject JournalismJournalism
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Politics High‑importance

	Politics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Psychology Low‑importance

	Psychology portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Psychology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Psychology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PsychologyWikipedia:WikiProject PsychologyTemplate:WikiProject Psychologypsychology
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Military history: Intelligence / Russian & Soviet Start‑class

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history

Start

This article has been rated as Start-class on the project's quality scale.

This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
Referencing and citation: criterion not met Coverage and accuracy: criterion not met Structure: criterion met Grammar and style: criterion met Supporting materials: criterion not met

Associated task forces:
/
	Intelligence task force
	Russian, Soviet and CIS military history task force

Media High‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Media, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Media on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MediaWikipedia:WikiProject MediaTemplate:WikiProject MediaMedia

High

This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Media To-do List:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : Mackay Radio
Cleanup : Media influence, Video game culture, Sound bite
NPOV : Content (media and publishing)
Verify : Multimedia, Alternative media, Alternative newspaper
Other :
- Answer requests for comments

Culture High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Culture, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of culture on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CultureWikipedia:WikiProject CultureTemplate:WikiProject Cultureculture
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Internet culture High‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Internet culture, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of internet culture on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Internet cultureWikipedia:WikiProject Internet cultureTemplate:WikiProject Internet cultureInternet culture

High

This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Internet culture To-do:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : View all requested internet culture articles
Expand : Pick an article from here or here
Photo : Category:Internet culture articles needing images
Stubs : All stubs are located here
Other : Category:Internet self-classification codes (!?); Try to get YouTube to FA; Tag all articles you find with {{WikiProject Internet culture}}
- See also Category:Internet culture articles needing attention

Sociology Low‑importance

	Society portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Sociology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of sociology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SociologyWikipedia:WikiProject SociologyTemplate:WikiProject Sociologysociology
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Change Series?

Does this article really belong under the "War" series? Disinformation does not necessarily involve "warfare" imo. Dingus1233 (talk) 22:28, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

agree: I think that disinformation is not really part of the war series. Part of disinformation certainly could be classified as hybrid warfare, but most of it is media manipulation and internet manipulation can can be done for harm and profit, according the its definition by the EU code of practice on disinformation MexFin (talk) 12:45, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Vaccine diplomacy

@Mathglot The section on US disinformation has a section about a disinformation campaign against China, which is a fact reported by Reuters https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

The issue is that part of the paragraph describes the situation as "payback" against China. However, the source cannot be corroborated. The uncorroborated statement by @Amigao is the following.

"The campaign was described as "payback" for COVID-19 disinformation by China directed against the U.S." using the following reference https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/06/14/pentagon-stands-secret-anti-vaccination-disinformation-campaign-philippines-after-reuters-report.html

The problem is that I cannot find confirmation that any spokesperson from the US actually corroborates this statement. Therefore, I cannot see how military.com is anything else than an opinion.

Therefore, I rewrote the statement keeping the original Reuters source, but characterising it as "vaccine diplomacy" according to the source from The Conversation, which does precisely what it says: Explain how the fact (that the US did conduct a disinformation campaign against Chinese Vaccines) can be explained as part of a known tactic (vaccine diplomacy)

"The campaign, which ran from 2020 to mid-2021, has been described as part of a vaccine diplomacy campaign aiming to foster client-state relationships with the Phillipines." citing a reference from The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/us-military-launched-a-secret-anti-vax-campaign-in-the-philippines-heres-why-im-not-surprised-232639

I think my statement is closer to encyclopedic knowledge, because the US did not acknowledge that the campaign is payback MexFin (talk) 12:42, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MexFin, First, The military.com report is news reporting, thus presumably peer-reviewed, and TheConversation is one person's opinion, and may sometimes be used because many of their guest writers are domain experts, but under other terms (WP:RSOPINION) than a peer-reviewed source. (If you disagree about the reliability of Military.com, the place to start is at WP:RSN.) Second, the military.com article is quoting the Reuters article as the source for that expression, and they are considered about as reliable as you can get. Even one source would have been sufficient, but you have two, one quoting the other. Therefore, there is no problem using it in our article. There is no requirement, by the way, that the subject of a report (the U.S., in this case) acknowledge anything regarding reports made about it in order for them to be usable in an article. Mathglot (talk) 16:37, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot Thank you for your opinions, but I just want to clarify that I believe we are having two separate discussions. The first one is about sources and the second is about content. I Think you focus on the references, while I am focusing on the content. I will start with sources first.

(1) References: I am not questioning the reliability of the news references. Both are used for different purposes. One builds a statement of the disinformation campaign (Reuters and others), and the other contextualizes it as part of vaccine diplomacy (the conversation).

(2) Content: The characterization of this campaign as "payback" is pretty important and, in my view it is wrong to use it in the Wikipedia article. The one committing the disinformation campaign is the US, which a source within the article characterizes as "indefensible." However, the text "payback" justifies it as something that arguably China deserves. The only time the word payback is used in the Reuters article is in the lead. It is not attributed and does not appear anywhere else. Now, as you mention, the military.com article is essentially referencing the reuters article, and citing the lead about payback as if it was from an original source, when it is not. I do not mind citing the military.com source, but not as a direct quote because it (the quote) is just referencing the lead in the Reuters article, not a quote from a source. For instance, the aljazeera article does not use the word payback and just reports what happened: a disinformation campaign against the vaccines, explaining it has been criticized as it puts lives in danger for geopolitical gain. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/14/pentagon-ran-secret-anti-vax-campaign-to-undermine-china-during-pandemic

I hope this brings a bit of clarity. MexFin (talk) 06:00, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You use the word "source" in an interesting way, as if it would be better to get the actual quoted words of someone involved in the affair as somehow the real or legitimate "source" (which however would be both primary, and opinion) rather than the words of the news report (secondary, peer-reviewed, and independent). I rather think you are viewing this whole thing backwards. Reuters is the source—the secondary source: it can hardly be exceeded in terms of reliability, and if we decide to echo one of terms they use it could hardly come from a more impeccable source. Mathglot (talk) 07:17, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is a good conversation, @Mathglot that actually goes back to WP:RS, and more precisely to WP:RSHEADLINES (I will copy it below). Reuters is a reliable news organization, absolutely. However, not every word in the Reuters article is a factual statement, especially not its headline or subheadline. This crucial distinction is the key point in WP:RSHEADLINES. I quote (my emphasis):

"News headlines—including subheadlines—are not a reliable source. If the information is supported by the body of the source, then cite it from the body. Headlines are written to grab readers' attention quickly and briefly; they may be overstated or lack context, and sometimes contain exaggerations or sensationalized claims with the intention of attracting readers to an otherwise reliable article. They are often written by copy editors instead of the researchers and journalists who wrote the articles."

The payback section I am arguing is from a reliable source, Reuters, but it is problematic as per WP:RSHEADLINES. The military.com article wrongly quotes the sub headline as if it were a news fact, which is not. It comes from the editorialization of the Reuters article, precisely the distinction that WP:RSHEADLINES warns about and the point I am making here. MexFin (talk) 08:06, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Leon Uris' novel "Topaz"

The term disinformation occurs in Leon Uris' novel of 1967, with the exact meaning in this article. rudra (talk) 06:37, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Disinformation research

I think the section on disinformation research makes the article a bit bulky and challenging to read. Perhaps it could be important to separate disinformation research in the same way that we have a separate article on disinformation attack. The reason is that several of the points in the current article are specific research findings (about the consequences of disinformation during the US 2016 Presidential election). They are very important, but perhaps it should be its own article that can focus on the academic contributions to disinformation?

What do you think? MexFin (talk) 13:31, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]