{"title":"Weaponising #Fakenews on Twitter: Generating Flak or Critiquing the Status Quo in the Trump Era?","authors":"R. Alan Berry, Judith E. Rosenbaum, Amy M. Corey","doi":"10.1080/13183222.2023.2267265","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"AbstractThe phrase “fake news” has become a household term in recent years, a feat that can in large part be attributed to its popularity during the Trump presidency. Utilising social media platforms such as Twitter, the former president and his followers used the hashtag #FakeNews to attack politicians, civic leaders, as well as media organisations with the goal of “draining the swamp.” This combination of anti-establishment rhetoric with the status quo embodied by the Office of the President raises questions about whether the rhetoric associated with the hashtag is genuine, citizen-driven critique or is in fact a form of flak, a critique of the news media produced by powerful organisations and governmental entities, as defined by the Propaganda Model (PM). This study offers an empirical analysis through a qualitative examination of social media posts using #FakeNews in conjunction with posts about immigration issues 2016–2020. Findings show that both pro-Trump and anti-Trump Twitter users utilise #FakeNews to attack the other side, obfuscate the issue, or double down on their stance, indicating that flak is systemically generated to distract citizens from effectively challenging the status quo.KEYWORDS: fake newsflakimmigrationPropaganda ModelTwitter DISCLOSURE STATEMENTNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Twitter changed its name to “X” in July 2023. Since the study was carried out prior to that date, and the platform is, at the time of revisions, still popularly known as Twitter, the decision was made to use the platform’s old name.2 A post-analysis check revealed that a number of the accounts that posted these tweets had been removed by Twitter. The authors made the decision to keep these tweets in their dataset for two reasons. First, the users themselves did not delete their content. Second, the authors deemed the nature of the study and the content of the tweets significantly relevant, that keeping these tweets was more important than maintaining an up-to-date dataset.3 All the tweets quoted here are not the literal messages that were posted; they are paraphrased to protect the users’ identities. Original data is available upon reasonable request.4 In a November 12, 2019 tweet, Trump wrote, “Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from “angels.” Some are very tough, hardened criminals.” In fact, immigrants with a significant criminal record are not eligible for the DACA programme (Rupar Citation2019).Additional informationNotes on contributorsR. Alan BerryR. Alan Berry (corresponding author) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine, Orono. Email: richard.berry@maine.eduJudith E. RosenbaumJudith E. Rosenbaum, Ph.D., is a researcher in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine, Orono.Amy M. CoreyAmy M. Corey, Ph.D., teaches communication at California State University, San Marcos.","PeriodicalId":46298,"journal":{"name":"Javnost-The Public","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Javnost-The Public","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2023.2267265","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
AbstractThe phrase “fake news” has become a household term in recent years, a feat that can in large part be attributed to its popularity during the Trump presidency. Utilising social media platforms such as Twitter, the former president and his followers used the hashtag #FakeNews to attack politicians, civic leaders, as well as media organisations with the goal of “draining the swamp.” This combination of anti-establishment rhetoric with the status quo embodied by the Office of the President raises questions about whether the rhetoric associated with the hashtag is genuine, citizen-driven critique or is in fact a form of flak, a critique of the news media produced by powerful organisations and governmental entities, as defined by the Propaganda Model (PM). This study offers an empirical analysis through a qualitative examination of social media posts using #FakeNews in conjunction with posts about immigration issues 2016–2020. Findings show that both pro-Trump and anti-Trump Twitter users utilise #FakeNews to attack the other side, obfuscate the issue, or double down on their stance, indicating that flak is systemically generated to distract citizens from effectively challenging the status quo.KEYWORDS: fake newsflakimmigrationPropaganda ModelTwitter DISCLOSURE STATEMENTNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Twitter changed its name to “X” in July 2023. Since the study was carried out prior to that date, and the platform is, at the time of revisions, still popularly known as Twitter, the decision was made to use the platform’s old name.2 A post-analysis check revealed that a number of the accounts that posted these tweets had been removed by Twitter. The authors made the decision to keep these tweets in their dataset for two reasons. First, the users themselves did not delete their content. Second, the authors deemed the nature of the study and the content of the tweets significantly relevant, that keeping these tweets was more important than maintaining an up-to-date dataset.3 All the tweets quoted here are not the literal messages that were posted; they are paraphrased to protect the users’ identities. Original data is available upon reasonable request.4 In a November 12, 2019 tweet, Trump wrote, “Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from “angels.” Some are very tough, hardened criminals.” In fact, immigrants with a significant criminal record are not eligible for the DACA programme (Rupar Citation2019).Additional informationNotes on contributorsR. Alan BerryR. Alan Berry (corresponding author) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine, Orono. Email: richard.berry@maine.eduJudith E. RosenbaumJudith E. Rosenbaum, Ph.D., is a researcher in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine, Orono.Amy M. CoreyAmy M. Corey, Ph.D., teaches communication at California State University, San Marcos.
摘要近年来,“假新闻”一词已经成为一个家喻户晓的词汇,这在很大程度上要归功于特朗普总统任期内的流行。利用推特等社交媒体平台,这位前总统和他的追随者使用#FakeNews标签攻击政客、公民领袖以及媒体组织,目的是“抽干沼泽”。这种反建制言论与总统办公室所体现的现状相结合,引发了人们的疑问:与标签相关的言论是真实的、公民驱动的批评,还是实际上是一种形式的批评,是对由宣传模型(PM)定义的强大组织和政府实体生产的新闻媒体的批评。本研究通过对社交媒体上使用#FakeNews的帖子进行定性分析,并结合2016-2020年移民问题的帖子,进行了实证分析。调查结果显示,支持特朗普和反对特朗普的推特用户都利用#FakeNews来攻击对方,混淆问题,或者在自己的立场上加倍,这表明攻击是有系统地产生的,目的是分散公民的注意力,使他们无法有效地挑战现状。关键词:假新闻;移民;宣传模式;twitter披露声明作者未报告潜在利益冲突。注1 Twitter于2023年7月更名为“X”。由于这项研究是在该日期之前进行的,并且该平台在修订时仍被普遍称为Twitter,因此决定使用该平台的旧名称事后分析显示,发布这些推文的一些账户已被推特删除。作者决定将这些推文保存在他们的数据集中有两个原因。首先,用户自己并没有删除他们的内容。其次,作者认为研究的性质和推文的内容显著相关,保持这些推文比保持最新的数据集更重要这里引用的所有推文都不是发布的文字信息;它们被改写是为了保护用户的身份。如有合理要求,可提供原始资料在2019年11月12日的一条推文中,特朗普写道,“DACA中的许多人已经不再年轻,他们远非‘天使’。”有些是非常强硬的罪犯。”事实上,有重大犯罪记录的移民没有资格参加DACA计划(Rupar Citation2019)。附加信息:贡献者说明阿兰BerryR。艾伦·贝瑞(通讯作者),奥罗诺缅因大学传播与新闻系博士研究生。邮箱:richard.berry@maine.eduJudith E. Rosenbaum judith E. Rosenbaum博士,缅因州奥罗诺大学传播与新闻系研究员。Amy M. Corey博士,在加州州立大学圣马科斯分校教授传播学。
期刊介绍:
Javnost - The Public, an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed social and cultural science journal published by the European Institute for Communication and Culture in association with the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, addresses problems of the public sphere on international and interdisciplinary levels. It encourages the development of theory and research, and helps understand differences between cultures. Contributors confront problems of the public, public communication, public opinion, public discourse, publicness, publicity, and public life from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives.