  What characteristics define disinformation and fake news? To address this
research question, this Technical Note provides a comprehensive analysis of
disinformation and fake news, synthesizing 46 definitions and highlighting four
key points addressing their fundamental characteristics. Adopting the Prisma
2020 method, five search sets with the Boolean operator AND were selected in
both Portuguese and English, which were applied across four databases,
resulting in 237 reviewed articles. Following a meticulous analysis, relevant
articles were identified and included, while duplicates and inaccessible
documents were excluded. It points to disinformation as information that is
totally or partially false, crafted by a sender with the aim of misleading,
with opportunistic content designed to manipulate reality, being amplified by
individual characteristics of the receiver in their interpretation and by
contextual factors in which they are embedded. This Technical Note seeks to
contribute to an understanding of the phenomenon of disinformation that
includes the contextual dimension, obtaining as fundamental elements of
analysis: I.) Sender; II.) Content; III.) Receiver; and IV.) Environment.
