IDONT: Information Disorder Ontology

IDONT is a reference ontology for the Information Disorder framework, grounded in OntoUML and the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO).

Prefix and URI

Prefix	Namespace
idont:	https://purl.org/dsl/idont#
ex:	https://purl.org/dsl/idont/data/martian-invasion-cbs#

Files

File	Description
information-disorder.ttl	TBox in Turtle
information-disorder.rdf	TBox in RDF/XML
abox-war-of-the-worlds.ttl	ABox for the War of the Worlds illustrative case
queries/competency-questions.sparql	Aggregated SPARQL queries for the 5 competency questions
queries/cq1-classification.rq	CQ1 query
queries/cq2-agents-in-each-phase.rq	CQ2 query
queries/cq3-content-formats.rq	CQ3 query
queries/cq4-message-reuse.rq	CQ4 query
queries/cq5-motivations.rq	CQ5 query

Ontology Overview

IDONT models information disorder as a structured socio-temporal phenomenon composed of:

• InformationDisorderEpisode: a temporally delimited episode or campaign.
• InformationDisorderEpisodePhase: a bounded phase within an episode, specialized into CreationPhase, ProductionPhase, and DistributionPhase.
• InformationDisorderEvent: an information disorder occurrence, specialized into MisinformationEvent, DisinformationEvent, and MalinformationEvent.
• Message: communicative content characterized by content, format, and basedOnReality.
• AgentParticipation: a relator connecting an Agent to a Message in the context of a phase, with participationType, intentionToHarm, and motivation.
• Motivation: a quality associated with participation and classified by MotivationType.

Competency Questions

The repository includes queries for the following CQs:

• CQ1: How can an information disorder event be classified as misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation?
• CQ2: Which agents participate in each phase of an information disorder episode?
• CQ3: Which content formats are associated with the message artifacts involved in each phase of the episode?
• CQ4: Which message artifact is reused across the phases of the episode?
• CQ5: What motivations characterize agents' participation in information disorder events?

Instantiation

The ABox models the 1938 War of the Worlds CBS radio broadcast as an illustrative misinformation case. The episode contains three phases:

• CreationPhase_MI: Orson Welles participates as Creator and involves WarOfTheWorldsScript, a text message artifact.
• ProductionPhase_MI: CBS Radio participates as Producer and involves WarOfTheWorldsBroadcast, an audio message artifact.
• DistributionPhase_MI: Mercury Theatre on the Air participates as Distributor and reuses WarOfTheWorldsBroadcast.

This structure supports the paper's CQ3 result (script -> text, broadcast -> audio) and CQ4 result (the broadcast artifact reused in production and distribution).

Loading in Protege

1. Open Protege and select File > Open.
2. Load information-disorder.ttl for the ontology alone.
3. Load abox-war-of-the-worlds.ttl together with the TBox to run the competency-question queries.
4. Run a reasoner if you need inferred class hierarchy results. The provided CQs work over the explicit triples in the current ABox.

Running the SPARQL Queries

Run each .rq file over the combined graph:

information-disorder.ttl + abox-war-of-the-worlds.ttl

Expected result counts:

CQ	Rows	Main result
CQ1	1	WarOfTheWorldsBroadcast typed as MisinformationEvent
CQ2	3	one agent per phase
CQ3	3	creation uses text; production and distribution use audio
CQ4	3	broadcast artifact appears in production and distribution
CQ5	6	social, psychological, and financial motivations by agent participation

License

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).