Fake news are not simply a side effect of communicative overload enabled by digital and social media. By now, they can be considered as a phenomenon rooted in the cultural, technical and business dynamics of our media-system, able to produce deep social effects on individuals and communities. Starting from this assumption, fake news appear as the complex result of the combination of several factors, such as:
- the unstoppable transformation of media as "ubiquitous habitat";
- the users tendency/need to be "always on";
- the activation of communication flows, "technologically determined";
- the growing importance of storytelling, caused by a widespread "narrative turn";
- the emergence of concepts such as "post-truth" and "populism".
All these issues can magnify the spread of fake news and create the conditions for a dystopian situation similar to what Postman described, writing before the internet: "Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much information that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance."
The research project aims to analyse the ways in which fake news participate in the process of social construction of reality and could increase possible effects, such as "cultivation", "agenda setting" or "spiral of silence". Starting from the development of a "dynamic" operational definition and considering the creation and distribution processes of these contents across multiple platforms, a specific focus on fake news consumption is provided. The main goal of the research project is to investigate the social effects of fake news, in terms of influence on the perceptual, cognitive and behavioural dimensions of the individuals. In order to detect the characteristic element of fake news: the audience motivations to consider them as real.
The rise of SNS, the impact of technological changes (search engines, machine learned algorithms, etc.), but also users attitudes (social, cultural, ideological, etc.), have empowered contents' personalization. Within this scenario, fake news appear as a meaningful social phenomenon, as proved by the numerous researches and studies focused on this specific topic.
In particular, the main purpose of this research project is to go beyond the current model of analysis in respect of fake news, which focuses on the one hand on people's behaviour and conditioning, and therefore related primarily to politics and journalism (Bakshy et al., 2015); on the other hand on considering fake news as part of web-related an SNS-related phenomena, such as confirmation biases and filter bubble (Pariser, 2011) or echo chamber (Sunstein 2009). The research project, in fact, aims at proposing an ecological approach (Morin 2016) to the study of fake news, taking into consideration the creation, distribution and reception processes as a whole. The research is based on the consideration of fake news as a media genre/format, and aims then to connect the current analytical path concerning fake news, focused on the ideological and economical purposes based on which fake news are created and spread, with an analysis concerning how recipients perceive and use fake news.
The purpose is then to identify an operational dynamic definition in order to establish a benchmark and to go beyond the current diversified range of "fake news" definitions. The aim is to dispel any opportunistic and somehow "fashionable" use of this expression (Tandor et al. 2018), aimed to delegitimize different opinions and positions rather than focusing on the effective falsehood of a content. The inappropriate use of this expression, which impoverishes the intellectual and scientific approach to fake news; this could paradoxically reinforce the underlying vagueness and generality within public debate concerning this issue, which appears to be the ideal breeding ground for fake news themselves (Brewer et al 2013). The identification of an ecological definition appears to be an effective tool to dissuade from a misleading use of fake news and centre the debate on an effective all-embracing definition. A deeper knowledge of these elements will allow the creation and diffusion of effective institutional responses (such as guidelines, white papers, specific additions to the ethical codes of the involved professionals, etc.) to the proliferation of fake contents, and especially to their structural use with antidemocratic purposes.
A second element of innovation consists in a deep analysis of the social impact of fake news, grounded on the perceptive dimension of the phenomenon, starting from the following relevant points:
- why people believe in fake news;
- what are the main effects of fake news on recipients, in terms of cognitive, behavioural and even valuable points of view;
- what are commonalities between people believing in fake news.
The aim is to better understand what we could define "uses and gratifications" (Ruggiero, 2000) prompted by fake news consumption: a better comprehension not as much of what fake news "do to" users, but rather what users "do with" fake news as they reach them. In other words, the relevance of a sort of "selective influence", related to fake news, in terms of exposure, attention, perception, memorization and action (Zillmann, Bryant 2013). In this perspective, the users' analysis represents the crucial point of the empirical part of the research in order to go beyond the assumption of recipients as a blurred group of individuals. By exploring different variables, such as socio-demographic factors, cultural and media consumption, motivation and mode to consume fake news and consequent re-actions, the research aims to propose a typology of users based on different fake news consumption.
REFERENCES
Bakshy, E., Messing, S., & Adamic, L. A. (2015). Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348(6239), 1130-1132.
Brewer, P. R., Young, D. G., & Morreale, M. (2013). The impact of real news about ¿fake news¿: Intertextual processes and political satire. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 25(3), 323-343.
Morin, E. (2016). Ecologiser l'homme. Lemieux éditeur.
Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble: How the new personalized web is changing what we read and how we think. Penguin.
Ruggiero, T. E. (2000). Uses and gratifications theory in the 21st century. Mass communication & society, 3(1), 3-37.
Tandoc Jr, E. C., Lim, Z. W., & Ling, R. (2018). Defining ¿fake news¿ A typology of scholarly definitions. Digital Journalism, 6(2), 137-153.
Zillmann, D., & Bryant, J. (Eds.). (2013). Selective exposure to communication. Routledge.