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A long-standing assumption of communication and rhetorical theory is that “all rhetorical interaction is manipulative in that communicators intend messages and are strategic in their choice of causes, selection of materials, design of compositions, and style of presentation” (Fisher, 1980, p. 125). From such an assumption, and integrating much of the foregoing, a tentative typology of dismisinformation is proposed in Table 2.5. This typology is not likely to properly situate certain forms of online deception beyond the scope of this analysis, such as internet scams (Garrett et al., 2019) or predatory behaviors such as grooming and sexual predation (Black et al., 2015; Burgess & Hartman, 2018; De Santisteban et al., 2018; Dietz, 2018; Gámez-Guadix et al., 2018; Lanning, 2018).

Table 2.5 Dismisinformation typology.

Motive/Cause	Unintentionally Communicated and Erroneous	Intentionally (Earnestly, Sincerely) Communicated but Incorrect	Intentional: Exploitative, Deceptive, Malicious, Pecuniary, Identity, Status, Political, Revenge	Intentional: Humorous-Entertainment-Attention-seeking
	Misinformation	Misinformation	Disinformation	Disinformation
Content Form	Factoidal1	Factual errors of AI, algorithms, recall, reporting, omission, commission, misinterpretation (e.g., a typo such as: “The incubation period for COVID-19 is 3 weeks” [vs. 2 weeks])	Errors of fact, recall, reporting, omission, commission, misinterpretation (e.g., “The epidemic will disappear once summer comes”) (e.g., Orso et al., 2020)	Information designed to mislead in particular action-relevant context (e.g., activist group diffusing on social media that businesses are open by governmental decree on an earlier date than the actual date or deep fake incriminating or mis-contextualized photo)	Information to elicit distraction or entertainment (e.g., memes, puns, punchline jokes, catchphrases, satire, sarcasm, etc.)
	Narrative/Attributional/Theoretical	Errors of narrative cohesion or attribution (e.g., “The Chinese expelled WHO representatives from their Wuhan lab once they knew they were at fault”; “they” is a misleading referent)	Conspiracy theories (e.g., “I think COVID was the brainstorm of Democrats who wanted to weaken Trump’s electoral prospects”)	Malign activist conspiracy theorizing or propaganda designed to mislead and establish belief systems contrary to best evidence (e.g., Russian bot farms amplifying misinformation and disinformation narratives to sow confusion and undermine trust in democratic institutions)	Narrative or coherent textual expositions to elicit distraction or entertainment (e.g., full essay parodies, humorous satire; e.g., The Onion, The Colbert Report)
Note 1: Excusing the adjectival neologism, the intent is to suggest that many forms of misinformation arise as small bits, specific facts or statistics, or simple sentence assertions that often arise from faulty memory, sequential error accumulation (e.g., the Chinese whispers or telephone game), or even mechanical or software reproduction or distortion causes.

As with several of the other typologies, the key horizontal dimension concerns the motive underlying the dismisinformation, whether relatively innocent or intentionally deceptive and misleading. The vertical dimension, in contrast, refers to the extent to which the message unit under consideration is relatively isolated and discrete (i.e., factoidal), or more fully elaborated in enthymemes, narratives, and theoretical expositions (i.e., narrative/attributional/theoretical). Thus, for example, a simple mistake in a date or location becomes misinformative, but a deepfake meme intending to place a person in a false and incriminating context is more of a form of disinformation. In this typology, the category of fake news becomes distributed and is no longer a distinct category, due to its lack of coherent genetic discernable or codifiable characteristics or features. Instead, fake news becomes more of a rhetorical speech act, related to the tropes of nominal epithet, dysphemism, jeremiad, or diminutive. Nevertheless, as Avramov et al. (2020) argue, despite some key distinguishing features they posit, it is clear that there are “close relationships” (p. 515) and “cross-pollination” (p. 519) between the concepts of fake news and conspiracy theories.

Given this rather variegated landscape of dismisinformation in digital media, the question arises whether such modes of deception and disarray pose a problem for society. Understanding that there are always likely to be political disagreements over methodology and criteria for classifying dismisinformation, to date the research indicates that such viral forms have infected society in several domains particularly relevant to policy and to societal health and welfare.