Media crisis and disinformation: the participation of digital newspapers in the dissemination of a denialist hoax
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2021.jul.12Keywords:
Media crisis, Disinformation, Hoaxes, Denialists, Attention economics, News coverage, Science, Social networks, Social media, Three dimensional study modelAbstract
Disinformation is a communicative phenomenon that frequently feeds on political or electoral topics, as well as other aspects of our reality. This research takes as a case study the coverage given by the Spanish digital media to a hoax broadcast during the Filomena storm in 2021 that insisted that the snow was plastic. The purpose of this work is to analyze the instrumentalization of fake information as an expression of the information media crisis in the current context of disinformation. We set out four specific objectives: (SO1) to study the spread of the hoax through the media, (SO2) to analyze the construction of headlines in the news pieces, (SO3) to investigate the treatment of the hoax in the content of the pieces, and (SO4) to analyze the sources used in the pieces. To reflect on this phenomenon, we propose a three-dimensional model (structural, economic, and pragmatic) aimed at clarifying the relationship between the logic of the spread of hoaxes on the Internet and the role played by traditional media in their diffusion. The methodology used combines workflow techniques of digital methods with quantitative and content analyses. The results reveal the appropriation of certain communication strategies by digital newspapers aimed at obtaining visits. We conclude that the Spanish media, by adapting to the dynamics of disinformation irresponsibly encouraged by the attention economy, subscribe to and reinforce the crisis of credibility faced by the media ecosystem.
Downloads
References
Al-Rawi, Ahmed (2019). "Gatekeeping fake news discourses on mainstream media versus social media". Social science computer review, v. 37, n. 6, pp. 687-704. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439318795849
Bakir, Vian; McStay, Andrew (2018). "Fake news and the economy of emotions: Problems, causes, solutions". Digital journalism, v. 6, n. 2, pp. 154-175. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1345645
Bastian, Mathieu; Heymann, Sebastien; Jacomy, Mathieu (2009). "Gephi: an open source software for exploring and manipulating networks". In: International AAAI conference on weblogs and social media, pp. 361-362. https://gephi.org/publications/gephi-bastian-feb09.pdf
Bennett, W. Lance; Livingston, Steven (2018). "The disinformation order: Disruptive communication and the decline of democratic institutions". European journal of communication, v. 33, n. 2, pp. 122-139. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323118760317
Bharali, Bharati; Goswami, Anupa-Lahkar (2018). "Fake news: Credibility, cultivation syndrome and the new age media". Media watch, v. 9, n. 1, pp. 118-130. https://doi.org/10.15655/mw/2018/v9i1/49277
Carrera, Pilar (2018). "Estratagemas de la posverdad". Revista latina de comunicación social, n. 73, pp. 1469-1481. https://doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2018-1317
Casey, Bernadette; Casey, Neil; Calvert, Ben; French, Liam; Lewis, Justin (eds.) (2008). Television studies: the key concepts. New York: Routledge. ISBN: 978 0 415 37149 0
Cervi, Laura; Carrillo-Andrade, Andrea (2019). "Post-verdad y desinformación: uso del análisis del discurso para comprender la creación de narrativas emocionales y rivales en Brexit". Revista comhumanitas, v. 10, n. 2, pp. 125-150. https://doi.org/10.31207/rch.v10i2.207
Chadwick, Andrew (2013). The hybrid media system: Politics and power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978 0 190696733
Clayton, Katherine; Blair, Spencer; Busam, Jonathan A.; Forstner, Samuel; Glance, John; Green, Guy; Kawata, Anna; Kovvuri, Akhila; Martin, Jonathan; Morgan, Evan; Sandhu, Morgan; Sang, Rachel; Scholz-Bright, Rachel; Welch, Austin T.; Wolff, Andrew G.; Zhou, Amanda; Nyhan, Brendan (2020). "Real solutions for fake news? Measuring the effectiveness of general warnings and fact-check tags in reducing belief in false stories on social media". Political behavior, v. 42, n. 4, pp. 1073-1095. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-019-09533-0
Costa-Sánchez, Carmen; López-García, Xosé (2020). "Comunicación y crisis del coronavirus en España. Primeras lecciones". Profesional de la información, v. 29, n. 3, e290304. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2020.may.04
Decker, Ben (2019). Adversarial narratives: A new model for disinformation. Global Desinformation Index. https://disinformationindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/GDI_Adverserial-Narratives_Report_V6.pdf
De-la-Fuente, Manuel; Palomo, Bella; Palau-Sampio, Dolors; Canavilhas, Joí£o; Llorca-Abad, Germán; Sánchez-González, María (2015). "Interactivity and neojournalism: a professional perspective". In: Meso-Ayerdi, Koldobika; Aguirreazkuenaga-Onaindia, Irati; Larrondo-Ureta; Ainara (eds.). Active audiences and journalism. Analysis of the quality and regulation of the user generated contents. Bilbao: Servicio Editorial de la Universidad del País Vasco, pp. 211-238. ISBN: 978 84 9082 1008
Del-Fresno-García, Miguel (2019). "Desórdenes informativos: sobreexpuestos e infrainformados en la era de la posverdad". El profesional de la información, v. 28, n. 3, e280302. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2019.may.02
Del-Hoyo-Hurtado, Mercedes; García-Galera, María-del-Carmen; Blanco-Alfonso, Ignacio (2020). "Desinformación y erosión de la credibilidad periodística en el contexto de las noticias falsas. Estudio de caso". Estudios sobre el mensaje periodístico, v. 26, n. 4, pp. 1399-1409.
Dias, Nicholas; Sippitt, Amy (2020). "Researching fact checking: present limitations and future opportunities". Political quarterly, v. 91, n. 3, pp. 605-613. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12892
Ecker, Ullrich K. H.; O´Reilly, Ziggy; Reid, Jesse S.; Chang, Ee-Pin (2020). "The effectiveness of short-format refutational fact-checks". British journal of psychology, v. 111, n. 1, pp. 36-54. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12383
Effron, Daniel A.; Raj, Medha (2019). "Misinformation and morality: Encountering fake-news headlines makes them seem less unethical to publish and share". Psychological science, v. 31, n. 1, pp. 75-87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619887896
Flew, Terry (2019). "Digital communication, the crisis of trust, and the post-global". Communication research and practice, v. 5, n. 1, pp. 4-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/22041451.2019.1561394
Fourney, Adam; Racz, Miklos Z.; Ranade, Gireeja; Mobius, Markus; Horvitz, Eric (2017). "Geographic and temporal trends in fake news consumption during the 2016 US presidential election". In: CIKM 2017, Proceedings of the 2017 ACM conference on information and knowledge management, November 6-10, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1145/3132847.3133147
García-Galera, María-Carmen; Valdivia, Angharad (2014). "Prosumidores mediáticos. Cultura participativa de las audiencias y responsabilidad de los medios". Comunicar, v. 22, n. 43, pp. 10-13. https://doi.org/10.3916/C43-2014-a2
Giglietto, Fabio; Iannelli, Laura; Valeriani, Augusto; Rossi, Luca (2019). ""˜Fake news´ is the invention of a liar: How false information circulates within the hybrid news system". Current sociology, v. 67, n. 4, pp. 625-642. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392119837536
Graves, Lucas (2017). "Anatomy of a fact check: Objective practice and the contested epistemology of fact checking". Communication, culture & critique, v. 10, n. 3, pp. 518-537. https://doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12163
Graves, Lucas; Anderson, Chris W. (2020). "Discipline and promote: Building infrastructure and managing algorithms in a "˜structured journalism´ project by professional fact-checking groups". New media & society, v. 22, n. 2, pp. 342-360. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819856916
Gray, Jonathan; Bounegru, Liliana; Venturini, Tommaso (2020). ""˜Fake news´ as infrastructural uncanny". New media & society, v. 22, n. 2, pp. 317-341. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819856912
Guo, Lei (2020). "China´s "˜fake news´ problem: Exploring the spread of online rumors in the government-controlled news media". Digital journalism, v. 8, n. 8, pp. 992-1010. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2020.1766986
Han, Byun-Chul (2014). Psicopolítica. Barcelona: Herder. ISBN: 978 84 25433986
Himma-Kadakas, Marju (2017). "Alternative facts and fake news entering journalistic content production cycle". Cosmopolitan civil societies: An interdisciplinary journal, v. 9, n. 2, pp. 25-40. https://doi.org/10.5130/ccs.v9i2.5469
Howard, Philip N.; Woolley, Samuel; Calo, Ryan (2018). "Algorithms, bots, and political communication in the US 2016 election: The challenge of automated political communication for election law and administration". Journal of information technology & politics, v. 15, n. 2, pp. 81-93. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2018.1448735
Jí¼nger, Jakob; Keyling, Till (2019). Facepager. https://github.com/strohne/Facepager
McChesney, Robert W. (2007). Communication revolution: Critical junctures and the future of the media. New York: The New Press. ISBN: 978 1 595582072
Molina, Maria D.; Sundar, S. Shyam; Le, Thai; Lee, Dongwon (2019). ""˜Fake news´ is not simply false information: A concept explication and taxonomy of online content". American behavioral scientist, v. 65, n. 2, pp. 180-212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764219878224
Mourí£o, Rachel R.; Robertson, Craig T. (2019). "Fake news as discursive integration: An analysis of sites that publish false, misleading, hyperpartisan and sensational information". Journalism studies, v. 20, n. 14, pp. 2077-2095. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2019.1566871
Núñez-Gómez, Patricia; Abuín-Vences, Natalia; Sierra-Sánchez, Javier; Mañas-Viniegra, Luis (2020). "El enfoque de la prensa española durante la crisis del Covid-19. Un análisis del framing a través de las portadas de los principales diarios de tirada nacional". Revista latina de comunicación social, n. 78, pp. 41-63. https://doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2020-1468
Nyhan, Brendan; Porter, Ethan; Reifler, Jason; Wood, Thomas J. (2020). "Taking fact-checks literally but not seriously? The effects of journalistic fact-checking on factual beliefs and candidate favorability". Political behavior, v. 42, n. 3, pp. 939-960. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-019-09528-x
Pariser, Eli (2011). The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you. New York: The Penguin Press. ISBN: 978 0 241954522
Pierri, Francesco; Piccardi, Carlo; Ceri, Stefano (2020). "Topology comparison of Twitter diffusion networks effectively reveals misleading information". Scientific reports, v. 10, n, 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-58166-5
Rogers, Richard (2013). Digital methods. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN: 978 0 262528245
Rogers, Richard (2019). Doing digital methods. Sage. ISBN: 978 1 526487995
Shao, Chengcheng; Hui, Pik-Mai; Cui, Pengshuai; Jiang, Xinwen; Peng, Yuxing (2018). "Tracking and characterizing the competition of fact checking and misinformation: Case studies". IEEE access, v. 6, pp. 75327-75341.
Singer, Jane B. (2018). "Fact-checkers as entrepreneurs". Journalism practice, v. 12, n. 8, pp. 1070-1080. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2018.1493946
Tambini, Damian (2017). Fake news: Public policy responses. Media policy brief 20. London: Media Policy Project, London School of Economics and Political Science. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/80787497.pdf
Wardle, Claire (2018). "The need for smarter definitions and practical, timely empirical research on information disorder". Digital journalism, v. 6, n. 8, pp. 951-963. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2018.1502047
Weidner, Kelly; Beuk, Frederik; Bal, Anjali (2020). "Fake news and the willingness to share: a schemer schema and confirmatory bias perspective". Journal of product and brand management, v. 29, n. 2, pp. 180-187. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-12-2018-2155
Williams, Bruce A.; Delli-Carpini, Michael X. (2011). After broadcasting news. New York: Cambridge.
Zhao, Zilong; Zhao, Jichang; Sano, Yukie; Levy, Orr; Takayasu, Hideki; Takayasu, Misako; Li, Daqing; Wu, Junjie; Havlin, Shlomo (2020). "Fake news propagates differently from real news even at early stages of spreading". EPJ data science, v. 9, n. 1, pp. 2-14. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-020-00224-z
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Dissemination conditions of the articles once they are published
Authors can freely disseminate their articles on websites, social networks and repositories
However, the following conditions must be respected:
- Only the editorial version should be made public. Please do not publish preprints, postprints or proofs.
- Along with this copy, a specific mention of the publication in which the text has appeared must be included, also adding a clickable link to the URL: http://www.profesionaldelainformacion.com
- Only the final editorial version should be made public. Please do not publish preprints, postprints or proofs.
- Along with that copy, a specific mention of the publication in which the text has appeared must be included, also adding a clickable link to the URL: http://revista.profesionaldelainformacion.com
Profesional de la información journal offers the articles in open access with a Creative Commons BY license.
