Reinformation is the end-product of a communication process that has undergone a mutation by an outside force or third party. Usually reinformation is the manipulation of existing information by an information sender (or an individual or organization wishing to communicate a message) that completely changes its meaning by using methods such as subverting the original message, pulling it out of context, evolution through collaboration or a combination of all of these. The advent of reinformation as a modern form of communication is largely due to the world's ever-growing dependence on digital information technology. Digital computers allow for seamless manipulation of information, as well as unprecedented access to information, which in turn creates an environment that breaks down the concept of "ownership", "originality" and "reality" and fosters new cultural phenomena such as audio and text sampling and open source code sharing, along with the traditional forms of plagiarism, forgeries, and copyright infringement, all of which would be considered reinformation.

The term "reinformation" was coined by Operation Re-Information, an art and science research collective, to describe the next age of information and an art movement that has risen out of the death of post-modernism and deconstructionism and brought about the birth of recontextualism, or reinformation.