Terms like misinformation, disinformation and ‘fake news’ are all words we are familiar with. They are also all modifications of existing words:

On this blog I talk a lot about terminology, and the importance of understanding these terms when we use them in research, whether this is academic, journalistic, or otherwise. In this post, I’m going to discuss what is called a ‘retronym’:

A neologism created for an existing object or concept because the exact meaning of the original term used for it has become ambiguous (usually as a result of a new development, technological advance, etc.).

A retronym typically consists of the original term combined with a modifying word.

OED, 2023

Retronyms involve modifying a word that was previously standalone to contrast it from a recent or notable development of that word. Retronyms are born out of necessity to distinguish concepts. For example:

Original Concept	Later Development	Modification to original concept
Guitar	Electric guitar	Acoustic guitar
Milk	Non-dairy milk	Cow’s milk
Text	Rich text	Plain text

If we expand on the first example, the original standalone word guitar found itself amidst technological development and the electric guitar was created. This development necessitated modifying the original concept guitar into acoustic guitar. The retronym now is acoustic guitar to avoid confusing different types. The same modification has happened with fake news, misinformation and disinformation, however none of the retronyms have been universally adopted. Essentially, we need to fill in the empty column:

Original Concept	Later Development	Modification to original concept
News	Fake news
Information	Disinformation
Information	Misinformation

There are several retronyms that have been adopted to distinguish between news/information and fake news/disinformation/misinformation.

Definition	Source
information that is designed to be confused with legitimate news and is intentionally false	Facebook, cited by Oremus, 2017
news stories that were fabricated (but presented as if from legitimate sources) and promoted on social media in order to deceive the public for ideological and/or financial gain	Pennycook, Cannon, & Rand, 2018
one that purports to describe events in the real world, typically by mimicking the conventions of traditional media reportage, yet is known by its creators to be significantly false, and is transmitted with the two goals of being widely re-transmitted and of deceiving at least some of its audience	Rini, 2017
fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent	Lazer, et al., 2018
we argue that fake news is best understood as counterfeit news. A story is genuine news if and only if it has gone through the standard modern journalistic process	Fallis and Mathiesen, 2019

Facebook (Oremus, 2017) use legitimate news as the retronym while Rini (2017) uses traditional media reportage and Lazer et al. (2018) refer to news media content. One thing that is important in developing a retronym is ensuring that it is not biased or ideological, and doesn’t carry out a value judgement. For example, we don’t want a term that is ambiguous, and could mean both truthful and good, such as ‘real news’.

In defining disinformation and misinformation it’s important to think about the negative, and what these terms aren’t. Just as there isn’t a universal, agreed definition for disinformation and misinformation, there isn’t a standard, agreed upon retronym either. It’s important to think about this and to consider how we frame false and truthful content, and the effect this might have on understandings of key concepts in the field.