The magic word is credibility.
Disinformation can mean leaving out important informations. Telling lies is not the only method of disinformation. The not telling also creates thoughts and delegates them into certain directions, whereas other models of thinking are left out.
Like this, the deaths on the own side are adjusted downwards whereas the victims of the enemy are counted proudly - as long as they are not civilians. The post-Gulf War period demonstrated how the population reacts if the number of innocent victims is much higher than expected. It was the fact of those numbers that provoked the biggest part of the post-war critique.
The media in democratic states tend to criticize this, which does not mean that they always want to be free of governmental influence. They can choose to help the government in a single case by not writing anything against it or by writing pro-government stories.
At the same time every democracy has undemocratic parts in it - which is already part of democracy itself. There are situations when a democratic government may find it essential to put pressure on the media to inform the population in a certain way; and also censorship is nothing that can only be connected to dictatorship; just think of the Falkland War, the Gulf-War or the Kosovo-War.
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Political and economic agendas change. People leave, get exchanged. Whereas one of the things that never seem to change is disinformation. Watching different kinds of cultures and regimes throughout history you will always find disinformation.
Its use is variable just like its tools. First of all it does not necessarily need words. It is possible to disinform in any kind of language (sounds, symbols, letters or with the help of the body). As it seems to have come into existence together with human communication, we need not even hope that it will disappear once in a while.
One could rather say: disinformation has always been there.
Instead of hoping to stop it we need to learn to live with it, detect it, restore it to consciousness. Even this will not be any insurance for not walking into the trap. It is an attempt, nothing else.
For detecting disinformation one needs to know what types of disinformation are possible and how they work. This site gives you some ideas about the history, tendencies and different types of disinformation, with the restriction that it will mostly be about the Western types of disinformation, as it is still harder to understand the media of disinformation in other cultures; and anyhow, many methods and tools run parallel in different cultures.
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GCHQ is the British Government Communication Headquarters, which is in fact an electronic monitoring centre which intercepts communications using spy satellites, listening devices and code-cracking equipment. The 1994 Intelligence Services Act defines GCHQ's role in the post Cold War world. National security, economic well-being and the prevention and detection of serious crime are its headline interests. It routinely gathers information on drug-dealing, terrorism, and the movement of arms and key resources such as oil, but is also said to be heavily involved in ECHELON. GCHG praises itself to use and design high end technology such as Cray systems, Tandem based storage and high-end workstations, as well as software for Signals Analysis, Complex Data Manipulation, Translation and Transcription.
Massive online retail bookstore housing more than a million titles. Includes a book recommendation "personalizer,", a comprehensive list of The New York Times bestsellers, a "live" community events calendar with a daily survey and several forums, "highlighted" books from 19 subject areas, browsable categories such as antiques, ethnic studies, and pop culture, Books in the News, and weekly features such as reviews, excerpts, recommendations, interviews, events, "roundups" of popular titles, and quizzes.