Fake News: Where Journalists and Audiences Meet (and Where They Don’t)
Abstract
This article gives voice to two protagonists of the disinformation phenomenon: audiences and journalists. A two-objective comparative analysis is presented: on the one hand, to explore the audiences’ role in stimulating the disinformation phenomenon in Costa Rica and characterize the reception dynamics and interaction that they establish with fake news within the country; on the other hand, to give journalists a voice to compare and contrast their perceptions with their audiences’ perceptions. A qualitative methodology based on semi-structured interviews with a small and non-representative sample of Costa Rican journalists holding leadership positions at some of the country’s most important media outlets was used. Also, six discussion groups with audiences were held. This article performs a comparative analysis of what journalists and participating audiences think about the disinformation phenomenon, the term “fake news,” the responsibilities in the fight against this problem and the possible solutions. The results suggest that, according to journalists, misinformative content circulates on social media and does not come from the traditional media they represent. In contrast, audiences present an antagonistic position since they tend to associate disinformation with the traditional media. However, they also consider traditional media as a source of verification of false content circulating on social media.
Downloads
References
Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211-236. http://doi.org/10.1257/jep.31.2.211
Alemanno, A. (2018). How to counter fake news? A taxonomy of antifake news approaches. European journal of risk regulation, 9(1), 1-5.
Alonso, P. (2017). ‘Fake news’ y posverdad en tiempos de populismos: lecciones para periodistas. Cuadernos de periodistas: revista de la Asociación de la Prensa de Madrid, (34), 77-84. https://www.cuadernosdeperiodistas.com/fake-news-posverdad-tiempos-populismos-lecciones-periodistas/
Auerbach, C. F., & Silverstein, L. B. (2003). Qualitative data: an introduction to coding and analysis. New York University Press.
Bakir, V., & McStay, A. (2018). Fake news and the economy of emotions. Digital Journalism, 6(2), 154-175. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1345645
Beer, D. (2017). The social power of algorithms. Information, Communication & Society, 20(1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1216147
Blanco, I., García, C., & Tejedor, S. (2019). El impacto de las fake news en la investigación en Ciencias Sociales. Revisión bibliográfica sistematizada. Historia y Comunicación Social, 24(2), 449-469. https://doi.org/10.5209/hics.66290
Brandtzaeg, P. B., & Følstad, A. (2017). Trust and distrust in online fact-checking services. Communications of the ACM, 60(9), 65-71. https://doi.org/10.1145/3122803
Brenan, M., & Stubbs, H. (2020). News media viewed as biased but crucial to democracy. Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/316574/news-media-viewed-biased-crucial-democracy.aspx
Campos-Freire, F., Rúas-Araújo, J., López-García, X., & Martínez-Fernández, V.-A. (2016). Impacto de las redes sociales en el periodismo. Profesional de la Información, 25(3), 449-457. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2016.may.15
Canales, M., & Peinado, A. (1994). Grupos de discusión. In J. M. Delgado & J. Gutiérrez (Eds.), Métodos y Técnicas Cualitativas de Investigación en Ciencias Sociales (pp. 287-316). Editorial Síntesis.
Carazo-Barrantes, C., Tristán Jiménez, L., & Siles González, I. (2021). Noticias falsas y desinformación en Costa Rica: hacia una agenda de investigación. In I. Siles
González, L. Tristán Jiménez & C. Carazo Barrantes (Eds.), Verdad en extinción: miradas interdisciplinarias a la desinformación en Costa Rica, (pp. 3-44). Centro de Investigación en Comunicación (CICOM); Universidad de Costa Rica. https://www.kerwa.ucr.ac.cr/bitstream/handle/10669/85599/Siles_Tristan_Carazo_Verdad_en_extincio%cc%81n_2021.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Carlson, M. (2018a). Facebook in the news. Social media, journalism, and public responsibility following the 2016 trending topics controversy. Digital Journalism, 6(1), 4-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1298044
Carlson, M. (2018b). The information politics of journalism in a post-truth age. Journalism Studies, 19(13), 1879-1888. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2018.1494513
Davison, W. P. (1983). The third-person effect in communication. Public Opinion Quarterly, 47(1), 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1086/268763
Echevarría, B. (2016). Más ‘fact-checking’ contra la posverdad. Cuadernos de periodistas, (33), 9-16. https://www.cuadernosdeperiodistas.com/mas-fact-checking-la-posverdad/
Egelhofer, J. L., & Lecheler, S. (2019). Fake news as a two-dimensional phenomenon: a framework and research agenda. Annals of the International Communication Association, 43(2), 97-116. https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.2019.1602782
Figueras-Maz, M., Mauri-Ríos, M., Alsius-Clavera, S., & Salgado-De-Dios, F. (2012). La precariedad te hace dócil. Problemas que afectan a la profesión periodística. Profesional de la Información, 21(1), 70-75. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2012.ene.09
Fletcher, R., Cornia, A., Graves, L., & Nielsen, R. K. (2018). Measuring the reach of "fake news” and online disinformation in Europe. Australasian Policing, 10(2).
França, F. F., Costa, M. L. F., & Santos, R. O. D. (2019). As novas tecnologias digitais de informação e comunicação no contexto educacional das políticas públicas: possibilidades de luta e resistência. ETD Educação Temática Digital, 21(3), 645-661. https://doi.org/10.20396/etd.v21i3.8654687
Grinberg, N., Joseph, K., Friedland, L., Swire-Thompson, B., & Lazer, D. (2019). Fake news on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Science, 363(6425), 374-378. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aau2706
Guess, A., Nagler, J., & Tucker, J. (2019). Less than you think: prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook. Science Advances, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau4586
Hedman, U. (2015). J-Tweeters: pointing towards a new set of professional practices and norms in journalism. Digital Journalism, 3(2), 279-297. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.897833
Jang, S. M., & Kim, J. K. (2017). Third person effect of fake news: fake news regulation and media literacy interventions. Computers in Human Behavior, 80, 295-302. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.11.034
Klapper, J. T. (1957). What we know about the effects of mass communication: the brink of hope. Public opinion quarterly, 21(4), 453-474. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2746759
Klein, D. O., & Wueller, J. R. (2017). Fake news: a legal perspective. Australasian Policing, 10(2). https://ssrn.com/abstract=2958790
Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2012). Los elementos del periodismo. Aguilar.
Lawson, M. A., & Kakkar, H. (2020). Of pandemics, politics, and personality: the role of conscientiousness and political ideology in sharing of fake news. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(5), 1154. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ves5m
Lazer, D., Baum, M., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A., Greenhill, K., Menczer, F. M., Nyhan, B., Pennycook, G., Rothschild, D., Schudson, M., Sloman, S., Sunstein, C., Thorson, E., Watts, D., & Zittrain, J. (2018). The science of fake news. Science, 359 (6380), 1094-1096. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aao2998
Lecheler, S., & Egelhofer, J. L. (2020). Consumption of misinformation and disinformation. In H. Tumber & S. Waisbord (Eds.), The Routledge companion to media disinformation and populism (pp. 323-331). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003004431
Lotero-Echeverri, G., Romero-Rodríguez, L. M., & Pérez-Rodríguez, M. A. (2018). ‘Factchecking’ vs. ‘fake news’: periodismo de confirmación como recurso de la competencia mediática contra la desinformación. Index. Comunicación, 8(2), 295-316. http://rabida.uhu.es/dspace/bitstream/10272/16180/2/Fact-checking.pdf
Lunt, P., & Livingstone, S. (1996). Rethinking the focus group in media and communications research. Journal of Communication, 46(2), 79-98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1996.tb01475.x
Manor, I. (2019). The specter of echo chambers—Public diplomacy in the age of disinformation. In The Digitalization of Public Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy (pp. 135-176). Palgrave Macmillan; Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04405-3_5
Marchi, R. (2012). With Facebook, blogs, and fake news, teens reject journalistic “objectivity". Journal of Communication Inquiry, 36(3), 246-262. https://doi.org/10.1177/0196859912458700
Martens, B., Aguiar, L., Gómez-Herrera, E., & Mueller-Langer, F. (2018). The digital transformation of news media and the rise of disinformation and fake news. Digital Economy Working Paper 2018-02, Joint Research Centre Technical Reports. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3164170
McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Smith, M., & Wineburg, S. (2018). Can students evaluate online sources? Learning from assessments of civic online reasoning. Theory & Research in Social Education, 46(2), 165-193, https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2017.1416320
Metag, J., & Rauchfleisch, A. (2017). Journalists’ use of political tweets: functions for journalistic work and the role of perceived influences. Digital Journalism, 5(9), 1155-1172. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2016.1248989
Metzger, M. J., Flanagin, A. J., & Zwarun, L. (2003). College student web use, perceptions of information credibility, and verification behavior. Computers & Education, 41(3), 271-290. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0360-1315(03)00049-6
Middaugh, E. (2018). Civic media literacy in a transmedia world: balancing personal experience, factual accuracy and emotional appeal as media consumers and circulators. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 10(2), 33-52. https://doi.org/10.23860/JMLE-2018-10-2-3
Middaugh, E. (2019). More than just facts: promoting civic media literacy in the era of outrage. Peabody Journal of Education, 94(1), 17-31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2019.1553582
Miles, M. B., Huberman, A. M., & Saldana, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: a methods sourcebook. Sage.
Mourão, R. R., & Robertson, C. T. (2019). Fake news as discursive integration: an analysis of sites that publish false, misleading, hyperpartisan and sensational information. Journalism studies, 20(14), 2077-2095. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2019.1566871
Munger, K. (2020). All the news that’s fit to click: the economics of clickbait media. Political Communication, 37(3), 376-397. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2019.1687626
Musgrove, A., Powers, J., Rebar, L., & Musgrove, G. (2018). Real o fake? Resources for teaching college students how to identify fake news. Collegue & Undergraduate Libraries, 25(3), 243-260. https://doi.org/10.1080/10691316.2018.1480444
Nelson, J. L., & Taneja, H. (2018). The small, disloyal fake news audience: the role of audience availability in fake news consumption. New Media & Society, 20(10) 3720-3737. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444818758715
Pangrazio, L. (2018). What’s new about ‘fake news’? Critical digital literacies in an era of fake news, post-truth and clickbait. Páginas de Educación, 11(1), 6-22. http://dx.doi.org/10.22235/pe.v11i1.1551
Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble: how the new personalized web is changing what we read and how we think. Penguin Books.
Parra-Valero. P., & Oliveira, L. (2018). Fake news: una revisión sistemática de la literatura (Fake news: a systematic review of the literatura). Observatorio (OBS*), 12(5), 54-78. https://doi.org/10.15847/obsOBS12520181374
Pérez Tornero, J. M., Samy Tayie, S., Tejedor, S., & Pulido, C. (2018). ¿Cómo afrontar las noticias falseadas mediante la alfabetización periodística? Estado de la cuestión. Doxa Comunicación. Revista Interdisciplinar de Estudios de Comunicación y Ciencias Sociales, (26), 211-235. http://dx.doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.n26a10
Rodrigo Alsina, M. (2005). La construcción de la noticia. Paidós.
Rodríguez-Pérez, C. (2019). No diga fake news, di desinformación: una revisión sobre el fenómeno de las noticias falsas y sus implicaciones. Comunicación, (40), 65-74
Romero-Rodríguez, L. M., Contreras-Pulido, P., & Pérez-Rodríguez, M. A. (2019). Las competencias mediáticas de profesores y estudiantes universitarios. Comparación de niveles en España, Portugal, Brasil y Venezuela. Culture and Education, 31(2), 346-368. https://doi.org/10.1080/11356405.2019.1597564
Saldaña, J. (2009). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Sage.
Salgado, S. (2021). Disputes over or against reality?: fine-graining the textures of posttruth politics. In The Routledge Companion to Media Disinformation and Populism (pp. 101-109). Routledge
Sánchez, M., & Fuente, C. (2020). Periodismo vs desinformación: la función social del periodista profesional en la era de las fake news y la posverdad. Sintaxis, 1(4), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.36105/stx.2020n4.01
Shao, C., Ciampaglia, G. L., Varol, O., Yang, K. C., Flammini, A., & Menczer, F. (2018). The spread of low-credibility content by social bots. Nature communications, 9(1), 1-9.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06930-7
Siles, I., & Boczkowski, P. J. (2012). Making sense of the newspaper crisis: a critical assessment of existing research and an agenda for future work. New Media & Society, 14(8), 1375-1394. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444812455148
Suárez-Villegas, J. C., & Cruz Álvarez, J. (2016). Los dilemas deontológicos del uso de las redes sociales como fuentes de información. Análisis de la opinión de los periodistas de tres países. Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, (71), 66-84. https://doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2016-1084
Tandoc, E. C., Ling, R., Westlund, O., Duffy, A., Goh, D., & Zheng Wei, L. (2018). Audiences’ acts of authentication in the age of fake news: a conceptual framework. New Media & Society, 20(8), 2745-2763. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817731756
Terol-Bolinches, R., & Alonso-López, N. (2020). La prensa española en la era de la posverdad: el compromiso de la verificación de datos para combatir las fake news. Prisma Social: revista de investigación social, (31), 304-327.
Tong, J. (2018). Journalistic legitimacy revisited: collapse or revival in the digital age? Digital Journalism, 6(2), 256-273. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1360785
Vargo, C. J., Guo, L., & Amazeen, M. A. (2018). The agenda-setting power of fake news: a big data analysis of the online media landscape from 2014 to 2016. New Media & Society, 20(5), 2028-2049. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817712086
Vázquez-Herrero, J., Direito-Rebollal, S., & López-García, X. (2019). Ephemeral journalism:news distribution through Instagram stories. Social Media + Society, 5(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119888657
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146-1151. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9559
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
All of the works published are licensed under a CC BY 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution license. (updated on March 1st 2021)
The content of the journal may be shared in any material or format. The content may be adapted, contributed upon and transformed. Both possibilities are only permitted in so far as they complete the following conditions:
- Attribution: Credit must be given where it is due, a link to the license must be provided and changes, if made, must be indicated. This should be done in the manner deemed appropriate, without suggesting that the licensor promotes you or your use of the material.
Ownership rights
The patrimonial rights for Contratexto are published under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 license, allowing authors to keep the patrimonial rights to their work without restrictions.
If a work published in Contratexto were to be copied, distributed, spread, or any other activities contemplated in the aforementioned license, the author(s) and the journal must be mentioned visibly and expressly.
Self-archive
This journal allows and encourages authors to post items submitted to the journal on personal websites or institutional repositories both prior to and after publication, while providing bibliographic details that credit, if applicable, its publication in this journal.