FAKE NEWS: CREATIVE DECISION OR FRAUD?
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2018-2-14-18
The paper is devoted to the description of one of the phenomena of the modern media space, namely fake news. To denote the thing under study a lot of terms are used in different scientific paradigms: fake news, false news, mediamystification, information attack, media-fake. The term “fake news” is considered by the author to be the most appropriate one as it coincides with the genre aspect of the phenomenon under study, it reflects the dominant role of the fake news usage as the leading instrument of information and psychological warfare. The author gives the characteristics of the structural, linguistic, pragmatic and discursive peculiarities of the fake news. It is pointed out that to some extent fake news may be identical to newspaper hoax but the latter is mainly used in the framework of the paper-based mass-media whereas the Internet makes it necessary to create new terms for denoting newly emerged phenomena. The terms “fake news” and “newspaper hoax” also differ in the scale of their consequences: the latter might be quite harmless while the former might provoke cyberterrorism. The author gives some pieces of advice how to distinguish fake news from real messages in the modern mass-media discourse. The set of these rules might be helpful not only for ordinary readers but also for the journalists, i.e. for those who generate news.
Keywords: fake news, media space, axiological conflict, manipulation, information and psychological warfare
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Issue: 2, 2018
Series of issue: Issue 2
Rubric: TOPICAL ISSUES OF THE RUSSIAN STUDIES
Pages: 14 — 18
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