What's New About Fake News?

Abstract

The term "fake news" ascended rapidly to prominence in 2016 and has become a fixture in academic and public discussions, as well as in political mud-slinging. In the flurry of discussion, the term has been applied so broadly as to threaten to render it meaningless. In an effort to rescue our ability to discuss—and combat—the underlying phenomenon that triggered the present use of the term, some philosophers have tried to characterize it more precisely. A common theme in this nascent philosophical discussion is that contemporary fake news is not a new kind of phenomenon, but just the latest iteration of a broader kind of phenomenon that has played out in different ways across the history of human information-dissemination technologies. While we agree with this, we argue that newer sorts of fake news reveal substantial flaws in earlier understandings of this notion. In particular, we argue that no deceptive intentions are necessary for fake news to arise; rather, fake news arises when stories which were not produced via standard journalistic practice are treated as though they had been. Importantly, this revisionary understanding of fake news allows us to accommodate and understand the way that fake news is plausibly generated and spread in a contemporary setting, as much by non-human actors as by ordinary human beings.

Freedom of expression

“…While there is an ongoing debate about precisely what constitutes fake news (Aikin & Talisse, 2018; Gelfert, 2018; Rini, 2017), two key elements are that its producers normally intend deliberately to mislead their audiences (but cf. Michaelson et al., 2019) and that it displays the simulacra of journalistic accuracy while de facto violating its standards. Besides this, there is disagreement as to whether fake news is driven by political (as opposed to e.g., economic) goals (Rini, 2017, p. E45) and whether its effectiveness depends more on flawed institutional structures or on individual epistemic and cognitive weaknesses (Chambers, 2021; Rini, 2017).…”

Fake news, relevant alternatives, and the degradation of our epistemic environment

“…Philosophers have proposed several plausible definitions of fake news (Rini 2017;Aikin and Talisse 2018;Gelfert 2018;Mukerji 2018;Pepp, Michaelson, and Sterken, forthcoming). My argument goes through on any of these definitions; all that's required is that fake news provides agents with alternatives to claims they might know.…”

Deepfake Technology and Individual Rights

“…For a more detailed discussion of speech categories and their First Amendment protections, see Sumner 2004. 46 Misinformation through social media has received philosophical treatment from Millar (Millar 2019), Obadă (Obadă 2019) and Pepp, Michaelson, and Sterken (Pepp, Michaelson, and Sterken 2019). likely be other outlets that profit from the dissemination of misinformation and refuse to concede that such content is inauthentic, thereby catering to an audience that is willing (even eager) to consume misinformation.…”