Recognizing Falsehoods and Deception
A Practical Glossary
Demanding truth requires more than good intentions. It requires more than fact checking. It requires the ability to recognize how deception actually works.
Falsehoods are not all the same. They differ by intent, technique, and impact. Learning to identify these patterns makes it easier to spot distortion, resist manipulation, and call out bad-faith arguments without getting lost in complex faulty reasoning or endless fact-checking.
What follows is a practical glossary of the intents, forms, and techniques used to create and spread falsehoods—offered as a reference, a learning tool, and a clear picture of what we are up against.
Note: assembling and refining this glossary is a work in progress.
Table of Contents
Falsehoods by Intent
Disinformation
Misinformation
Malinformation
Propaganda
Falsehoods by Form and Technique
Forms & Narrative Structures
False Narratives
Conspiracy Theories
Immunization Against Evidence
Omission and Distortion of Truth
Selective Disclosure
Strategic Omission
Decontextualization
Cherry-Picking
Weak Evidence Inflation
Anecdotal Fallacy
Correlation = Causation
False Equivalence
Deflection & Psychological Manipulation
Strawman Constructions
Whataboutism
Moving the Goalposts
Gaslighting
Overwhelm & Saturation
The Gish Gallop
Flooding / “Firehose of Falsehood”
Fabrication & Power-Oriented Use of Truth
Hoaxes and Fabrications
Weaponizing Facts
Performative or “Bullshit” Rhetoric
Plausible Deniability
Intent vs. Cognition
Motivated Reasoning
Bad-Faith Argumentation
Why These Distinctions Matter
Using These Tools
Falsehoods by Intent
These categories describe the relationship between false or misleading information and the intent of those spreading it.
Disinformation
False information deliberately created and spread to deceive, manipulate, or gain power. Disinformation is intentional. It is strategic. It is designed to influence beliefs, behavior, or trust—often while disguising its origin or purpose.
Misinformation
False or inaccurate information shared without intent to deceive. People spreading misinformation usually believe it to be true. It thrives in fast-moving, emotionally charged environments where verification is slow or inconvenient.
Malinformation
Information that may be technically true but is used in misleading or harmful ways. This includes selective disclosure, decontextualization, or weaponizing facts to distort understanding rather than clarify it.
Propaganda
Information or messaging designed primarily to shape perception and behavior in service of power—often by repetition, emotional framing, and identity signaling rather than evidence. Propaganda may include truths, half-truths, and falsehoods. Its defining feature is not accuracy, but purpose.
These forms often interact. Disinformation campaigns frequently rely on ordinary people to unknowingly spread misinformation, while malinformation and propaganda lend plausibility to broader false narratives.
Falsehoods by Form and Technique
These categories describe the forms falsehoods take and the techniques used to spread, protect, or normalize them.
Forms & Narrative Structures
False Narratives
Coherent stories that arrange facts, half-truths, and falsehoods into a misleading frame. False narratives are powerful because they feel explanatory. They reduce complexity, assign blame, and offer emotional resolution—even when they distort reality.
Conspiracy Theories
Narratives that attribute events to secret plots by hidden actors, often immune to evidence or falsification. Contradictory information is reinterpreted as proof of the conspiracy itself, making correction difficult.
Immunization Against Evidence
Structuring a claim so that any challenge is dismissed in advance, and any counterevidence is reinterpreted as confirmation. Once a belief is immunized this way, evidence no longer functions as a test—it is absorbed and repurposed to reinforce the narrative.
Omission and Distortion of Truth
Selective Disclosure
Presenting only those facts that support a desired conclusion while withholding relevant countervailing information. Selective disclosure can involve true statements that nonetheless mislead by shaping what is seen—and what is kept hidden.
Strategic Omission
Leaving out relevant facts, context, or counterevidence to shape perception. This is often paired with technically accurate statements that nevertheless mislead.
Decontextualization
A form of strategic omission that removes crucial surrounding context so a true or partial fact produces a false conclusion. This includes cropped video, selective excerpts, or “just-the-headline” presentation that changes what something actually means.
Cherry-Picking
A form of strategic omission that selects only those facts or data points that support a desired conclusion. Contradictory evidence is ignored, minimized, or dismissed as irrelevant.
Weak Evidence Inflation
Anecdotal Fallacy
Using a vivid personal story or isolated example as if it settles a broader question. Anecdotes can be real and still misleading when they are treated as representative evidence, especially when stronger data is ignored.
Correlation = Causation
Assuming that because two things occur together—especially in sequence—one must have caused the other. This error is common in political narratives, health claims, and online “pattern” talk, where coincidence is retrofitted into certainty.
False Equivalence
Treating two things as morally or factually comparable when they are not, in order to blur accountability or create cynicism. False equivalence often sounds “balanced” while quietly erasing key differences in scale, intent, or evidence.
Deflection & Psychological Manipulation
Strawman Constructions
Misrepresenting an opposing position so it can be easily attacked. Strawmen replace real arguments with caricatures, allowing outrage to be directed at claims no one actually holds.
Whataboutism
Deflecting a claim or criticism by pointing to some other wrongdoing or inconsistency instead of addressing the evidence at hand. Whataboutism shifts attention away from truth and toward tribal scorekeeping.
Moving the Goalposts
Changing the standard of proof or the criteria for acceptance after evidence has been provided. This keeps a claim permanently unresolved and makes honest debate feel pointless.
Gaslighting
A pattern of denial and reversal that pressures people to doubt what they saw, heard, or remember. In public life, gaslighting often appears as “that never happened,” “you’re imagining things,” or rewriting prior statements despite clear evidence.
Overwhelm & Saturation
The Gish Gallop
Overwhelming an audience with many rapid claims—so numerous that correcting them all is impossible in real time. The goal is not to be right. It is to create exhaustion, confusion, and the impression that “no one really knows.”
Flooding / “Firehose of Falsehood”
Spreading a high volume of claims rapidly—often inconsistent, emotionally charged, and repeated across channels—so correction cannot keep pace. The result is not persuasion by evidence but exhaustion, confusion, and the sense that truth is unknowable. The Gish Gallop is typically deployed within a single exchange; the Firehose of Falsehood operates across time, platforms, and systems.
Fabrication & Power-Oriented Use of Truth
Hoaxes and Fabrications
Claims, events, quotes, or evidence that are wholly invented. Unlike ordinary error, fabrications are constructed to be persuasive and shareable, often with falsified documents, images, or “insider” assertions.
Weaponizing Facts
Using technically accurate information in ways intended to inflame, mislead, or distort rather than inform. Weaponized facts are chosen and framed for impact, not understanding, often to advance power, identity, or narrative goals.
Performative or “Bullshit” Rhetoric
Language aimed at emotional impact, identity signaling, or persuasion rather than truth. This form of speech is not concerned with whether statements are true or false—only with whether they are effective.
Plausible Deniability
Using wording, qualifiers, or ambiguity that enables a message to land one way for supporters while remaining deniable if challenged. It often appears as incendiary framing paired with an “escape hatch” line that can later be cited as proof of benign intent.
Intent vs. Cognition
Motivated Reasoning
The tendency to start with a desired conclusion and then accept, reject, or interpret evidence in ways that protect identity, loyalty, or emotion. Motivated reasoning often feels like “being rational,” but it selectively applies skepticism and standards of proof—strict for opposing claims, lenient for one’s own side.
Bad-Faith Argumentation
Engaging in debate with the appearance of reason while having no intention of following evidence to a conclusion. Bad faith often uses selective standards, deflection, rhetorical traps, and endless reframing—aimed at winning, exhausting, or dominating rather than clarifying.
Why These Distinctions Matter
The crisis facing public life is not simply that false information exists. It is that an expanding array of deceptive forms and techniques—amplified by modern media systems—are now normalized, rewarded, and institutionalized, while truth-telling is penalized or rendered ineffective.
Misinformation has always existed. What is new is the scale, sophistication and institutionalization of disinformation and malinformation—along with the erosion of shared standards for recognizing them.
When deception becomes routine, people stop arguing about facts and start arguing about identities. Trust collapses. Accountability weakens. Reality fragments.
Recognizing these patterns does not require expertise. It requires attention.
Using These Tools
Demanding truth does not mean knowing every answer. It means asking better questions:
• What is being omitted?
• Who benefits from this framing?
• Is emotion being used in place of evidence?
• Is this claim falsifiable—or insulated from challenge?
• Are facts being assembled to discover truth, or retrofitted to defend a conclusion?
Learning about how these tools work is not about winning arguments. It is about helping recognize, and bring to light, how they have been used, and are being used, to get to and maintain the situation we are in. It is about being better able to demand truth by revealing the framework behind any falsehood you are confronting. It is about restoring shared reality—and being able to protect it.
That is what the Reality-Based Community is about.