The Theory of Post-Truth. Identification and Limitation of Fake News

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Vasileva

The paper presents the theoretical and research aspects of media interrelations among the phenomena of post-truth, fake news, populist statements, and the use of alternative facts in political communication. It conducts a comparative analysis of these concepts and analyzes illustrative examples from the media environment in which the terms operate in the same information discourse. The main focus is on two key academic empirical studies whose theoretical and empirical scholarly approaches point to the main thesis of this paper – that post-truth and fake news create an emotional context of information perception and that this is the basis on which consumers and voters shape their behavior, reactions, understandings and views.

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Valchanov ◽  

The development of the Internet and social media and networks as a media environment and communication channels combined with the specificity of the journalistic profession in the online environment are a factor which contributes to the emergence and proliferation of fake news. The lack of reliable fact checking by the media and the fast news consumption by the public lead to mass disinformation about certain issues or subjects. The current paper examines fake news from several points of view and describes the models of their use – as harmless jokes, as lack of journalistic competence or professionalism and as means of manipulation and intentional misleading of public opinion. The attempts of big media corporations to fight fake news are also described.


Author(s):  
Janet Aver Adikpo

Today, the media environment has traversed several phases of technological advancements and as a result, there is a shift in the production and consumption of news. This chapter conceived fake news within the milieu of influencing information spread in the society, especially on the cyberspace. Using the hierarchy of influence model trajectory with fake news, it was established that it has become almost impossible to sustain trust and credibility through individual influences on online news content. The primary reason is that journalists are constrained by professional ethics, organizational routines, and ownership influence. Rather than verify facts and offer supporting claims, online users without professional orientation engage in a reproducing information indiscreetly. The chapter recommends that ethics be reconsidered as a means to recreate and imbibe journalistic values that will contend with the fake news pandemic.


Author(s):  
Thomas Schillemans

Public agencies are the objects of a large share of the daily news and devote substantial resources to media management and monitoring. This paper analyses how public agencies have adapted their internal structures and processes in order to meet the demands from their media environment. To this end, an analytical framework for the analysis of organisational mediatisation – the adaptation of internal structures and processes to external media demands – is developed. This is the first framework available for empirical analyses of organisational mediatisation. Its use is then demonstrated in a comparative analysis of the mediatisation of public agencies in Australia and the Netherlands; countries with contrasting political and media systems. An explorative, multimethod study describes how Australian agencies go to greater lengths in accommodating their media environment – they fight the media beast – whereas Dutch agencies are more hesitant; they are fumbling with the beast.


Subject 'Fake news' and US politics. Significance Throughout his presidency and the campaign that preceded it, Donald Trump has attacked news media that broadcast or write critical coverage of him and his circle. His habitual denial of unfavourable reports has established ‘fake news’, ‘alternative facts’ and ‘post-truth’ in the political lexicon. In contrast to Trump’s shifting positions on policy questions, the president’s animus for the media has been one of the constant aspects of his presidency. Impacts Trump’s central focus on his personal legitimacy will see him increase attacks on the media as difficulties mount. Deregulation will concentrate corporate ownership of local and national media, exacerbating the polarisation of news. Increased regulation of social media platforms is unlikely to restore consumer trust. The traditional media will probably cater to concentrated pockets of affluent and educated consumers.


2020 ◽  
pp. 147892992096834
Author(s):  
Declan Curran ◽  
Robert Gillanders ◽  
Mounir Mahmalat

The ideational power framework developed by Carstensen and Schmidt has sought to make explicit the manner in which ideas can exert an influence over policy outcomes. However, one key feature of this theoretical framework has not yet been adequately conceptualised: the communicative process through which policy entrepreneurs convey their ideas to the general public. This article focuses on one specific form of communicative discourse as a means of generating widespread public support for a given policy proposal: public discourse via the media – be it print, broadcast or social media. We argue that the ideational power literature should recognise the media as a powerful entity in its own right rather than merely depicting the media as an implement for political communication. We contend that the ideational power framework could usefully incorporate a characterisation of the media that has recently emerged from political communications research: the hybrid media system. In order to illustrate how the communicative process inherent in ideational power can be understood in terms of a hybrid media system, we undertake a comparative review of two empirical studies which assess political discourse during the 2016 US presidential election from the perspectives of ideational power and hybrid media systems.


Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts

This chapter examines three main threats to American democracy related to Facebook: Facebook microtargeting and dark ads, behavioral manipulation by Cambridge Analytica, and political clickbait factories. The chapter considers the effectiveness of psychographically microtargeted advertising and the question of exposure to “fake news” on Facebook during the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election. The chapter explains why behaviorally informed, microtargeted dark ads are an important novel threat to democratic practice independent of the overall architecture of the media environment, even as it cautions that there is no evidence to support this theory. It also argues that both the Cambridge Analytica and political clickbait threats were overstated.


Author(s):  
Miriam J. Metzger

This chapter explores the question of the continuing relevance of “mass media” due to recent technological changes in the media landscape. The chapter traces the history of media content production, distribution, and consumption from broadcasting to narrowcasting, and considers recent trends toward “hyperpersonalization” afforded by digital networked media. The chapter examines what these changes mean for politics and for political communication theory, and concludes by posing some questions about the future of mass media that serve as a call for research into the changing nature, circumstances, and effects of mass communication in the contemporary media environment.


Author(s):  
Rousiley Maia

The media play an important role in deliberative systems. Although several scholars are skeptical about the potential for enhancing deliberation, this chapter argues that the media system does not necessarily hinder deliberative practices. A better understanding of today’s hybrid media environment—one that merges mass and interpersonal communication and produces mixed-media relationships—is necessary for a critical perspective of connections among parts of a deliberative system. This analysis contends that political communication across Internet-based forums hosted by government bodies, the mainstream media, and multi-platforms of citizens’ talk should be assessed by taking into consideration diversified, complex, and usually contradictory interactions amongst actors that have distinct functions and interests within the political system. Insofar as deliberative principles and expectations are counterfactual, empirical research is always needed to investigate whether or not deliberative virtues are present in different contexts of media-based communication in a continuum of practices that form the deliberative system.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-27
Author(s):  
Acquaye P. ◽  
Ofosu-Boateng I.

Using a focus group discussion, this study sought to understand how media audiences perceive information in the media environment in Ghana. The study found out that the prevalence of fake news on social media platforms serves as a disincentive to consumers of media messages from giving attention to information from some media platforms. Legacy media, radio and television, for many of the participants, present credible information on its platform with the belief that rigorous scrutiny is done by the media organisation before information is shared with their audiences on air. Though participants in the group discussions are often dismissive of media information they have doubts about, they occasionally, not routinely, verify information from news portals they deem credible. Participants also rely on their intuition to assess the truthfulness or otherwise of a story.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadezhda Miteva ◽  

Careful and thorough fact-checking is a main tool for counteracting fake news, alternative facts and the context created in the Post-Truth Era. This paper examines the contemporary fact-checking mechanisms in the Bulgarian media environment. The methods applied are data analysis, interviews with proffessional journalists, a survey among media content users, and a case study. The research ws cnducted within the framework of the DCOST Project 01/10 – 04.07.2017 (project leader Prof. Lilia Raycheva), supported by the National Scientific Fund of Bulgaria, and developed within the Europpean Commission‘s Action IS 1404: Evolution of Reading in the Age of Digitization (E-READ).


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