Fakes, News and the Election: A New Taxonomy for the Study of Misleading Information within the Hybrid Media System
Giglietto, F., Iannelli, L., Valeriani, A., & Rossi, L. (2019). ‘Fake news’ is the invention of a liar: How false information circulates within the hybrid news system. Current Sociology. DOI: 10.1177/0011392119837536
Convegno AssoComPol 2016 (Urbino, 15-17 Dicembre 2016)
40 Pages Posted: 2 Dec 2016 Last revised: 17 Apr 2019
Date Written: November 30, 2016
Abstract
The widely unexpected outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election prompted a broad debate on the role played by “fake-news” circulating on social media during political campaigns. Despite a relatively vast amount of existing literature on the topic, a general lack of conceptual coherence and a rapidly changing news eco-system hinder the development of effective strategies to tackle the issue. Leveraging on four strands of research in the existing scholarship, the paper introduces a radically new model aimed at describing the process through which misleading information spreads within the hybrid media system in the post-truth era. The application of the model results in four different typologies of propagations. These typologies are used to describe real cases of misleading information from the 2016 US Presidential election. The paper discusses the contribution and implication of the model in tackling the issue of misleading information on a theoretical, empirical, and practical level.
Keywords: misinformation, disinformation, hybrid news system, news-making, elections
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