A unified account of information, misinformation, and disinformation

In this paper I develop and present a unified account of information, misinformation, and disinformation and their interconnections. The unified account is rooted in Paul Grice's notions of natural and non-natural meaning (in: Grice (ed) Studies in the way of words. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, pp 213-223, 1957) and a corresponding distinction between natural and non-natural information (Scarantino and Piccinini in Metaphilosophy 41(3):313-330, 2010). I argue that we can specify at least three specific kinds of non-natural information. Thus, as varieties of non-natural information there is intentionally non-misleading information, unintentionally misleading information-i.e. misinformation-and intentionally misleading information-i.e. disinformation. By shifting the focus from the truth-values of content to the intention/intentionality and misleadingness/non-misleadingness of that content I obtain a unified account that makes room for the potential misleadingness of true content (true disinformation), the potential non-misleadingness of false content (irony), and everything in between.