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Hi, empyre,
Before we get too much deeper in the weeds/weed, I wanted to introduce some
categories for clarification. Because there's Fake news, and then there's
FAAAKE News (though those weren't two of the types, just trying to make the
point.)
Here's a typology I came up with during our course, excerpted from this
lecture:
https://medium.com/the-fake-news-reader/fake-news-a-look-back-and-i-made-you-look-294e0560a234
6 Forms of Fake News
1) Fantasy Fake: The otherworldly stories of Bat Boy and Elvis sightings
from Weekly World News, Enquirer (sometimes), et cetera. This is fake news
designed to entertain. (Incidentally, it’s some of the most carefully
wrought from a legal perspective — though that’s not exactly the full
story.)
<http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/08/tabloid-law/377722/>
2) Funny Fake: Good Ol’ Satire, as in The Onion, The Daily Show, National
Lampoon, The Oxford Mutton Chops, The Congressional Reporter, Bunk
Magazine, et cetera. This is fake news designed to entertain, but with a
slant, a point of view.
3) Fony Fake: Hoaxes designed to prank or punk the foolish and entertain
the bored. Like Funny Fake, these Fony Fake stories may ape the forms and
styles of news, but like Fantasy Fake, they’re more interested in offering
diversions to their audiences than critically sending up the fourth estate.
Think: War of the Worlds. People pretending to be Spencer Pratt.
<http://markcmarino.com/tempspence/>
4) Fallacious Fake: (propaganda lite) These misleading or sensationalized
news whose job it is to rile-up and whose primary color is yellow. 24-hour
news channels (Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS Kids) can trip or dive into this
bog as can government press offices. (Can be misinformation or
disinformation, on the Habermas scale.)
5) Flat Fake: (populist propaganda) A more direct form of propaganda, this
news pretends to be satire, even posts on sites marked as fake news
outlets, but it’s not particularly funny. In fact, it’s not trying to make
people laugh but instead to make people click
<http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs>on
the link, Like, ReTweet, and share it for the generation of ad revenue.
(ex., Pope Endorses Trump — not exactly a knee-slapper).
6) фальшивка Fake (*Falshivka* Fake): (propaganda de ruski) Fake news
originating in Moscow.
The last two, I'd argue, have proliferated notably in recent times, largely
due to frankly russo ingenuity and the average person's access to cheap and
easy tools for creating news that looks just like that created by
professional news organs.
Now, this typology is a bit untrustworthy and not just because I made it.
It's slipperiness comes from its reliance on intention, which can neither
be determined or reliably revealed.
That said, having at least some categories helps us to have a conversation
that makes a bit more sense.
Onward!
Best,
Mark
_______________________________________________
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