{"id":2722,"date":"2019-10-30T08:00:32","date_gmt":"2019-10-30T13:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/?p=2722"},"modified":"2019-10-29T12:45:59","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T17:45:59","slug":"fake-news-definitions-facts-and-implications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2019\/10\/30\/fake-news-definitions-facts-and-implications\/","title":{"rendered":"Fake News: Definitions, Facts, and Implications"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:The_fin_de_si%C3%A8cle_newspaper_proprietor_(cropped).jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"333\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2019\/10\/fake-news-600x333.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2723\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2019\/10\/fake-news-600x333.jpg 600w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2019\/10\/fake-news-300x167.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2019\/10\/fake-news-768x426.jpg 768w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2019\/10\/fake-news.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>1894 newspaper illustration by Frederick Burr Opper, Library of Congress via Wikimeida commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The election of President Donald Trump in the United States in 2016 ushered in an era of attacks on the media and accusations that outlets such as <em>The New York Times<\/em> and <em>The Washington Post<\/em> are publishing \u201cfake news.\u201d But what exactly is \u201cfake news\u201d? And why are claims about information, misinformation, and disinformation in American journalism so troubling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">TSP has previously published articles summarizing scholarly concerns about fake news&#8211;in particular, <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2019\/02\/08\/the-political-polarization-phenomenon\/\">its role in the political polarization phenomenon<\/a>. Media scholars also now see these trends as part of a larger, longer-term crisis of democracy itself, beginning sometime in the final decades of the 20th century.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/apps.cla.umn.edu\/directory\/profiles\/carlson1\">Matt Carlson<\/a>. 2018. &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/1369118X.2018.1505934\">Fake News as an Informational Moral Panic: The Symbolic Deviancy of Social Media during the 2016 US Presidential Election<\/a>. <em>Information, Communication &amp; Society<\/em>: 1\u201315.<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cardiff.ac.uk\/people\/view\/182966-wahl-jorgensen-karin\">Karin Wahl-Jorgensen<\/a>. 2018. &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/0163443718772190\">Media Coverage of Shifting Emotional Regimes: Donald Trump\u2019 Angry Populism<\/a>.&#8221; <em>Media, Culture &amp; Society<\/em> 40(5): 766\u2013778. <\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/research.ntu.edu.sg\/expertise\/academicprofile\/Pages\/StaffProfile.aspx?ST_EMAILID=EDSON\">Edson C. Tandoc<\/a>. 2019. &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1111\/soc4.12724\">The Facts of Fake News: A Research Review<\/a>. <em>Sociology Compass<\/em>: 1\u20139.<\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/forskning.mah.se\/en\/id\/ai4677\">Johan Farkas<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/pure.itu.dk\/portal\/en\/persons\/jannick-schou(37d2d64e-933b-4abf-adef-d477de61e9bf).html\">Jannick Schou<\/a>. 2019. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.routledge.com\/Post-Truth-Fake-News-and-Democracy-Mapping-the-Politics-of-Falsehood\/Farkas-Schou\/p\/book\/9780367322175\"><em>Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy: Mapping the Politics of Falsehood<\/em><\/a>. New York: Routledge.<\/li><li><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>In spite of all of these questions and controversies, one thing is clear: there is no consensus on what exactly fake news is. The definition of fake news is unclear to many Americans. According to a <a href=\"http:\/\/mediainsight.org\/PDFs\/Journalism%202018\/Americans_News_Media_Report_2018.pdf\">2018 study<\/a> from The Media Insight Project, there are several understandings of what \u201cfake news\u201d really means to Americans nationwide:&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>71% of Americans think fake news is \u201cmade-up stories from news outlets that don\u2019t exist\u201d<\/li><li>63% think fake news refers to \u201cmedia outlets that pass on conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated rumors\u201d<\/li><li>62% think it means \u201cjournalists from real news organizations making stuff up\u201d&nbsp;<\/li><li>43% think fake news refers to news organizations making sloppy mistakes<\/li><li>25% call satire or comedy about current events fake news<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Audiences play a key role in interpreting the news and acting on it &#8212; or not. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.journalism.org\/2018\/09\/10\/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2018\/?utm_campaign=20180912_Rundown&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=Pew\">Pew Research Center data<\/a> shows 68 percent of American adults say that they get their news on social media even though 57 percent of them expect the news they see on social media to be \u201clargely inaccurate.\u201d Academic studies also find that \u201cfake news\u201d is often used by social media users to insult information shared by members of opposing political parties.\u00a0\u00a0<br><\/h5>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/smpa.gwu.edu\/silvio-r-waisbord\">Silvio Waisbord<\/a>. 2018. &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/1461670X.2018.1492881\">Truth is What Happens to News: On Journalism, Fake News, and Post-Truth<\/a>. <em>Journalism Studies<\/em> 19(13): 1866\u20131878.<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.radford.edu\/content\/chbs\/home\/comm\/faculty\/bios.html#par_text_2\">John Brummette<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jou.ufl.edu\/staff\/marcia-distaso\/\">Marcia DiStaso<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/cla.auburn.edu\/cmjn\/public-relations\/faculty\/michail-vafeiadis\/\">Michail Vafeiadis<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/robertson.vcu.edu\/people\/journalism-faculty\/messner.html\">Marcus Messner<\/a>. 2018. &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/1077699018769906\">Read All About It: The Politicization of &#8216;Fake News&#8217; on Twitter<\/a>.&#8221; <em>Journalism &amp; Mass Communication Quarterly<\/em> 95(2): 497\u2013517.<\/li><li><\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The election of President Donald Trump in the United States in 2016 ushered in an era of attacks on the media and accusations that outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post are publishing \u201cfake news.\u201d But what exactly is \u201cfake news\u201d? And why are claims about information, misinformation, and disinformation in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,85],"tags":[38543,234,122644,122650,196,95756,8497,118,22877,122641,129,122645,142,3163,122639,122643,122651,3165,3166,1223,154,19038,95755,38546,3274,122642,732,36518,36392],"class_list":["post-2722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-politics","tag-culture","tag-democracy","tag-disinformation","tag-fact","tag-facts","tag-fake-news","tag-information","tag-journalism","tag-journalist","tag-journalists","tag-media","tag-misinformation","tag-news","tag-news-media","tag-news-outlet","tag-news-reporter","tag-news-stories","tag-newspaper","tag-newspapers","tag-polarization","tag-political","tag-political-parties","tag-political-polarization","tag-politics","tag-populism","tag-reporter","tag-social-media","tag-stories","tag-trump"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2724,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722\/revisions\/2724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}