What is (fake) news? Analyzing news values (and more) in fake stories

‘Fake news’ has been a topic of controversy during and following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Much of the scholarship on it to date has focused on the ‘fakeness’ of fake news, illuminating the kinds of deception involved and the motivations of those who deceive. This study looks at the ‘news...

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Main Authors: Tandoc, Edson C., Thomas, Ryan J., Bishop, Lauren
Other Authors: Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2021
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146452
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1464522023-03-05T15:58:49Z What is (fake) news? Analyzing news values (and more) in fake stories Tandoc, Edson C. Thomas, Ryan J. Bishop, Lauren Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information Social sciences::Mass media Content Analysis Disinformation ‘Fake news’ has been a topic of controversy during and following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Much of the scholarship on it to date has focused on the ‘fakeness’ of fake news, illuminating the kinds of deception involved and the motivations of those who deceive. This study looks at the ‘newsness’ of fake news by examining the extent to which it imitates the characteristics and conventions of traditional journalism. Through a content analysis of 886 fake news articles, we find that in terms of news values, topic, and formats, articles published by fake news sites look very much like traditional—and real—news. Most of their articles included the news values of timeliness, negativity, and prominence; were about government and politics; and were written in an inverted pyramid format. However, one point of departure is in terms of objectivity, operationalized as the absence of the author’s personal opinion. The analysis found that the majority of articles analyzed included the opinion of their author or authors. Ministry of Education (MOE) Published version The first author’s work on this project was also supported by a Tier 1 Academic Grant from the Singapore Ministry of Education. 2021-02-17T07:43:57Z 2021-02-17T07:43:57Z 2021 Journal Article Tandoc, E. C., Thomas, R. J., & Bishop, L. (2021). What is (fake) news? Analyzing news values (and more) in fake stories. Media and Communication, 9(1), 110-119. doi:10.17645/mac.v9i1.3331 2183-2439 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146452 10.17645/mac.v9i1.3331 1 9 110 119 en Media and Communication © 2021 Edson C. Tandoc Jr., Ryan J. Thomas, Lauren Bishop. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited. application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Social sciences::Mass media
Content Analysis
Disinformation
spellingShingle Social sciences::Mass media
Content Analysis
Disinformation
Tandoc, Edson C.
Thomas, Ryan J.
Bishop, Lauren
What is (fake) news? Analyzing news values (and more) in fake stories
description ‘Fake news’ has been a topic of controversy during and following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Much of the scholarship on it to date has focused on the ‘fakeness’ of fake news, illuminating the kinds of deception involved and the motivations of those who deceive. This study looks at the ‘newsness’ of fake news by examining the extent to which it imitates the characteristics and conventions of traditional journalism. Through a content analysis of 886 fake news articles, we find that in terms of news values, topic, and formats, articles published by fake news sites look very much like traditional—and real—news. Most of their articles included the news values of timeliness, negativity, and prominence; were about government and politics; and were written in an inverted pyramid format. However, one point of departure is in terms of objectivity, operationalized as the absence of the author’s personal opinion. The analysis found that the majority of articles analyzed included the opinion of their author or authors.
author2 Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
author_facet Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
Tandoc, Edson C.
Thomas, Ryan J.
Bishop, Lauren
format Article
author Tandoc, Edson C.
Thomas, Ryan J.
Bishop, Lauren
author_sort Tandoc, Edson C.
title What is (fake) news? Analyzing news values (and more) in fake stories
title_short What is (fake) news? Analyzing news values (and more) in fake stories
title_full What is (fake) news? Analyzing news values (and more) in fake stories
title_fullStr What is (fake) news? Analyzing news values (and more) in fake stories
title_full_unstemmed What is (fake) news? Analyzing news values (and more) in fake stories
title_sort what is (fake) news? analyzing news values (and more) in fake stories
publishDate 2021
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146452
_version_ 1759857266986582016