Disinformation
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"During the World War, the German General Staff even had a Bureau known as the "Disinformation Service ." Here experts worked out seemingly plausible secret military plans and orders, which were then "planted" as authentic documents in the enemy's hands . Sometimes even war prisoners would be found in possession of secret plans so cleverly concocted by the Bureau of Disinformation as to convince the captors that they were inside plans." --In Stalin's Secret Service (1939), page 234 |
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Disinformation is false information spread deliberately to deceive. The English word disinformation is a translation of the Russian dezinformatsiya, derived from the title of a KGB black propaganda department.
Russian use began with a "special disinformation office" in 1923. Disinformation was defined in Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1952) as "false information with the intention to deceive public opinion". Operation INFEKTION was a Soviet disinformation campaign to influence opinion that the U.S. invented AIDS. The U.S. did not actively counter disinformation until 1980, when a fake document reported that the U.S. supported apartheid.
The word disinformation did not appear in English dictionaries until the late-1980s. English use increased in 1986, after revelations that the Reagan Administration engaged in disinformation against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. By 1990 it was pervasive in U.S. politics; and by 2001 referred generally to lying and propaganda.
See also
- 1995 CIA disinformation controversy
- Active measures
- Active Measures Working Group
- Counter Misinformation Team
- Denial and deception
- Fact checking
- Fake news
- False flag
- Fear, uncertainty and doubt
- Forgery as covert operation
- Information warfare
- Internet manipulation
- Kompromat
- Media censorship and disinformation during the Gezi Park protests
- Manufacturing Consent
- Operation Shocker
- Operation Toucan (KGB)
- Politico-media complex
- Post-truth politics
- Propaganda in the Soviet Union
- Russian military deception
- Sharp power
- Social engineering (political science)