The Fake News Debate and its Consequences: Jana Laura Egelhofer explains her research

The phrase “fake news” is widely used in public discourse and is mainly understood as a specific genre of disinformation that is made to look like actual news articles. However, increasingly, politicians use “fake news” as a label to discredit critical news media. While most scholarly interest focuses on the prevalence and effects of disinformation, the discursive construction of “fake news” as a label to delegitimize journalism can be equally disrupting for democracies. Therefore, Egelhofer’s research focuses on the content and consequences of the debate surrounding “fake news”. She finds that mainly populist politicians use these media attacks. Importantly, when politicians discredit factual news articles as “fake news” it has consequences for how trustworthy people perceive the media and to what degree they believe the information provided by journalists.
Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences: https://vds-sosci.univie.ac.at/