Here’s a mathematical puzzle for information theorists. If one bit of information equals one bit of negative uncertainty, then what does one bit of disinformation yield? Surely, it goes the other way and creates uncertainty, but by how much? Is it a matter of reversing the signs? The point of the first equation is to portray the purpose of information in reducing uncertainty. But that equation assumes the integrity of the data in question, so it quickly falls apart when disinformation is introduced into the formula.

Disinformation vs lack of information

What breaks it all down is the fact that disinformation is not the same as lack of information. You have a certain degree of uncertainty for every bit of data you are missing, however many yottabytes that may add up to. Instead, when you encounter bad information, you step farther away from knowing something than you otherwise would if you had no information. In this scenario, the impact of disinformation on uncertainty is exponential rather than linear.

Let’s say you go on your phone to see what’s happening in the world. As a digital native, you launch your social media platform of choice and come across an article about an ex-Pfizer scientist. He is purportedly blowing the whistle on widespread inoculation against COVID being a commercially motivated solution to what he characterizes as an overblown non-problem. Before you stumbled upon this story, you might have had 2 megabytes of uncertainty regarding vaccines. Yet, by the time you’ve read it, you have synthesized perhaps 10 megabytes of uncertainty. Your new sense of security in this false information, along with the psychological manipulation that now makes you susceptible to further disinformation, is worth much more damage than just having no information at all.

How cognitive biases manipulate information and perception

This exponential effect is possible due to humanity’s most glaring psychological maladaption – cognitive biases – and the man-made computer algorithms designed to exploit them. Our bias toward negativity makes us focus more on negative feelings, events, and media, which create a deeper mental impact on us than their positive counterparts (Vaish et al., 2008). Knowing this, bad actors intentionally design negative misinformation to target us emotionally and cloud our judgment (Carrasco-Farre, 2022). From there, our confirmation bias takes the wheel, leading us to seek only information that strengthens our beliefs. Our social groups then do the heavy lifting, locking us in echo chambers impenetrable by conflicting opinions (Ciampaglia et al., 2018). And on and on it goes.

References

Carrasco-Farré, C. (2022, May 9). The fingerprints of misinformation: How deceptive content differs from reliable sources in terms of cognitive effort and appeal to emotions. Nature News. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01174-9  

Ciampaglia, G. L., & Menczer, F. (2018, June 21). Biases make people vulnerable to misinformation spread by social media. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/biases-make-people-vulnerable-to-misinformation-spread-by-social-media/

Vaish, A., Grossmann, T., & Woodward, A. (2008). Not all emotions are created equal: The negativity bias in social-emotional development. Psychological Bulletin, 134(3), 383–403. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.3.383