Fake News as a Floating Signifier: Hegemony, Antagonism and the Politics of Falsehood

Abstract

Fake news" has emerged as a global buzzword. While prominent media outlets, such as The New York Times, CNN, and Buzzfeed News, have used the term to designate misleading information spread online, President Donald Trump has used the term as a negative designation of these very "mainstream media." In this article, we argue that the concept of "fake news" has become an important component in contemporary political struggles. We showcase how the term is utilised by different positions within the social space as means of discrediting, attacking and delegitimising political opponents. Excavating three central moments within the construction of "fake news," we argue that the term has increasingly become a "floating signifier": a signifier lodged in-between different hegemonic projects seeking to provide an image of how society is and ought to be structured. By approaching "fake news" from the viewpoint of discourse theory, the paper reframes the current stakes of the debate and contributes with new insights into the function and consequences of "fake news" as a novel political category.

From Novelty to Normalization? How Journalists Use the Term “Fake News” in their Reporting

“…Before October 2016, there were no articles by Austrian newspapers on fake news. This finding is in line with authors who have suggested that the 2016 US presidential election was the origin of the fake news debate (e.g., Farkas and Schou 2018;McNair 2017). As seen in Figure 2, news coverage on fake news started out focusing on disinformation.…”

“…Beyond the term itself, we also wonder who the central actors are when the term is used. A small handful of studies have indicated a small range of actors that are commonly held responsible for the creation and spread of fake news or responsible for coming up with solutions for it (Carlson 2018;Farkas and Schou 2018;Tandoc, Jenkins, and Craft 2019). Prominently discussed in this context are social media platforms such as Facebook, political actors such as Donald Trump, and citizens who are unable to sufficiently evaluate information online.…”

“…Prominently discussed in this context are social media platforms such as Facebook, political actors such as Donald Trump, and citizens who are unable to sufficiently evaluate information online. Interestingly, when considering counteractions, some news coverage stresses that part of the responsibility also lies with (transparent and objective) journalism (Carlson 2018;Farkas and Schou 2018; see also Tandoc, Jenkins, and Craft 2019). Furthermore, Farkas and Schou (2018) showed that a weaponization of the term "fake news" (i.e., use of the label) was predominantly connected to right-wing populist actors (i.e., in particular to Donald Trump and his supporters), who used it to discredit liberal and mainstream media (see also Lischka 2019).…”

Motivated cognition, conspiratorial epistemology, and bullshit: A model of post-factual political discourse

“…Is there really such a thing as a post-factual crisis in the West? Various concepts such as "post-truth", "populism" [6], "fake news" [7], "disinformation" [8], and "propaganda" [9] that are currently floating in the academic as well as the public discourse with regards to the state of Western democracy might, as a kind of conceptual amalgamate, indicate that something is rotten not just in the state of Denmark, but in Western democracies in general. However, unless we clearly define the concepts we are using to evaluate the (epistemic) status of Western democracies, our conclusions are, at the very least, uncertain: Before we can confidently diagnose a "post-factual" crisis in the West, we need to have a solid understanding of what "post-factual" politics is actually supposed to mean.…”

‘Fake news’ as infrastructural uncanny

“…Habgood-Coote, 2018; Wardle and Derakhshan, 2017), we use it in an emic sense to refer to the social disturbance precipitated by a variety of false, misleading or problematic online content. We think it is important to recognise the role of this term in relation to a range of issues, and to study how it has become contested (cf Farkas and Schou, 2018;Harsin, 2018),. rather than abandoning…”