After an intense vote (see below), it was decided that my 5k-followers celebration thread should be on genre and fake news. A topic which I, for fairly strange non-standard reasons, happen to know a little bit about.
Thanks to all who played in particular The Usual Suspects, @IAmMardikins (who suggested the winning topic; hail the chairman!) @Dogtrouser_PI @Ferretgrove @TanyaKaroli @MarieEBM and a truckload of others. Anyway. Here goes:
A thread on genre and fake news. 1/
A crucial, sometimes efficient, sometimes highly problematic, feature of genre is that genres tend to naturalize themselves. They become habitual, invisible even. We can do a lot of thinking and a lot of acting with genre with knowing it. 2/
Today the genre label "fake news" is everywhere in debate. It's well-nigh impossible to log on to social media without encountering it, and the phenomenon it covers seems to be responsible for major societal challenges. 3/
However, it used to mean something else. It used to mean "news satire". Thus, this book which is on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. Notice the subtitle. 4/ 
This one about "The Onion and Philosophy" is also quite confident in its usage of the "fake news" label to mean "news satire". Again, notice the subtitle. 5/
This rather good scholarly article disambiguates the different meanings. 6/
doi:10.1080/21670811.2017.1360143
doi:10.1080/21670811.2017.1360143
I know all of this, because I research news satire and used to say that i did research in "fake news". And I drew well-nigh no public attention at all with the term and had to explain it wherever I went. 7/
However, at some point during 2016 all of this changed. "Fake news" was suddenly on everybodys lips. It wasn´t even early 2016, more like mid-late 2016; it was only when the US presidential election heated up. 8/
However, the genre label had a new meaning (or rather two new meanings, I'll get back to that); and the older meaning was well-nigh forgotten. If you say "fake news" today you definitely don´t make people expect to hear about news satire. 9/
This shows two interesting features about genre labels. 1) They can can change their meaning; they can even rise to prominence without retaining their original meaning. 2) When a cultural phenomenon rises to prominence it is going to need a genre label. 10/
Along the way, the meaning of the word "fake" in the genre label itself changed. An old beloved dictionary of mine defines the word fake in this way: 11/
"To do up, to cover up defects and faults so as to give a presentable appearance to, to doctor; to contrive, to fabricate, to make from defective material; to cheat, to fraud, to deceive. A thing thus prepared for deception, esp. a manufactured antique; a swindle, a dodge." 12/
In this sense, in its original meaning, "news satire", the meaning of the word was ironic. The news satire services themselves pointed to the fradulent character of their news reporting. Thus UNnews, a service of the wikipedia parody Uncylopedia describes itself like this: 13/
"UnNews is a service of Uncyclopedia that spreads misinformation and cons the public into swallowing it hook-line-and-sinker (and worm), by guilefully making it resemble authentic news. UnNews stories use satire to ensure the most unfair and biased reporting possible." 14
So, the cheating is clearly labelled, and there is no actual disinformation taking place, though there is a lot of pretend disinformation.
(isn´t it lovely btw?) 15/
(isn´t it lovely btw?) 15/
In the new usage, however, the "fake" in the term clearly refers to a fraudulent intention in the supposed news reporting. It is a purposeful swindle, a dodge, And like a manufactured antique, it is there to make you buy something that you should avoid. 16/
The sudden rise to prominence of a genre label clearly points to the fact that something had become exigent in the public sphere: the information value and trustworthiness of what appeared to be news reporting. Disinformation in presumed news reporting had become critical. 17/
As recent developments in the #CambridgeAnalytica scandal have again demonstrated, it is no coincidence that this happend alongside the Brexit-vote and the US presidential election. #Fakenews has been a key term to understand both. And it has been pertinent ever since.18/
However, no sooner had the term risen to prominence, before it immediately acquired two different meanings. Related, but quite obviously opposed. 19/
One was the disinformation posing at news spred by the likes of Breitbart, Infowars and similar - sometimes even more obscure - "news" services. Here false stories were fabricated to achieve a social impact in particular through social media. 20/
It's worth noticing that these stories are closer to bullshit in the Frankfurtian sense than to lying. It does not matter if they get exposed; in fact claiming that the pope or this or that actor supports Trump's election is bound to be found out. 21/
However, the exposion lags behind the fabricated story which spreads like wildfire across SoMe and reaches far more people. So the swindled stories are written for their effect; not to hide the truth but to spread a certain kind of disinformation. 22/
So, in this case, the "fake news" #genre label was used to warn against this kind of disinformation. And as such it has been fairly effective. 23/
However, at the same time - or following it closely - another meaning arose. It was used by the very disinformers themselves to attack not fabricated news stories, but the channels that reported the actual news. 24/
If a news story is inconvenient to the sitting US president, it is labelled "fake news"; no matter how well documented it is. It's a lame-ass bully defence and can be easily torn apart in rational discourse, obviously, but again it is strangely effective. 25/
Again it doesn´t matter if the lie is disingenuous and exposed as long as the disinformation works; as long as you can get the MAGA-crowd to shout "fake news" you can de-legitimize the actual news reporting and legitimize your own actions without having to answer for them. 26/
So, the genre label "fake news" has moved from a fairly harmless, if somewhat confusing label for news satire to a critical cultural battleground in the fight to retain Western democracy as we know it. 27/
If you can define what news stories belong to the genre, if you can label them, you can win the rhetorical battle over what information gets to count in the public sphere and thus further the public acceptance of your political agenda. Be it democratic or despotic. 28/28
Oh yes, and ping @J_amesp with whom I discussed this a while back and who could do all of this on a whole other level.
I will add in a few examples over time. This one is very good - or very awful:
And here is a very good thread on the level and impact of Russian fake news in the west.
