Cognitive Interpretation of the “Fake” Phenomenon as a Genre of Media Discourse

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the description of the cognitive mechanism of fake messages implementation in the media discourse. The controversial nature of this phenomenon is due to a number of linguistic and extralinguistic features, which determines a comprehensive cognitive-discursive analysis of the fake phenomenon in order to identify the sources of its destructiveness, the mechanisms that ensure the successful manifestation of the fake. The crucial violations of the basic laws of formal logic which function as a source of fake conflictogenity are examined in the paper, their productivity is revealed in this aspect, and several recommendations for verifying fake information are provided. The analyzed material is taken from the Internet pages of print and online media of various levels and formats, blogs functioning in the course of the media discourse. It is established that fake is a complex multi-stage cognitive-communicative action. The deliberate unreliability of a fake message determines the mandatory application of various kinds of violations of the norms of communication, first of all – the laws of formal logic. Violations of the laws of identity and sufficient reason are most often used, less often – the law of contradiction; the law of the excluded third, due to its specificity, is not used at all. Violation of the latter law inevitably leads to disavowal of falsification. Structural violations taking place in the cognitive model of a fake message contribute to the successful masking of fake information, as well as blocking the recipient’s critical thinking and, as a result, the intensification of speech effects on the addressee. In addition, the communicative perspective of a fake is associated with causing damage to the addressee. All these aspects make it possible to qualify fake as a destructive type of communicative actions involving the spreading of obviously unreliable socially significant information and aimed at the realization of speech influence on the addressee.