Proposing a practical taxonomy of misinformation for intervention design

There has been a recent rise in the dissemination of misinformation worldwide, facilitated by social media and the use of technology, both of which amplify its spread. To inform interventions that can help tackle this issue, researchers have developed various taxonomies to summarize and categorize terms associated with misinformation. These taxonomies tend to focus on a subsection of terms associated with misinformation, such as fake news. In contrast, the present research provides a novel taxonomy that includes a more exhaustive list of types of misinformation based on existing taxonomies and relevant literature. A total of 51 terms were categorized on dimensions that fell under three categories: Psychological (intentionality, profit, ideological), Content (format, manipulation, facticity), and Source (audience, verifiability, agent). This taxonomy provides 9 dimensions that researchers and policymakers can use to better understand the characteristics of terms related to misinformation. In addition, terms can be clustered together so that interventions can be created to tackle like-terms.