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We are awash in words and images that sound and look like real news, but are not. This article considers certain kinds of fake news as a genre of digital folklore and attempts to sort out the differences among fake news hoaxes, pranks, satires, and parodies. It offers examples of each and tries to show how fake news functions as folk political commentary or folk media criticism.
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AFS ETHNOGRAPHIC THESAURUS: news, joke cycles, political satire, digital media
Satire pervades the web, seeping into mailboxes and mainstream news like a spilled cup of coffee. it stains and it won't go away.
-thebittercup.com
LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I GET MOST OF MY NEWS these days from the internet rather than from a printed newspaper or a television broadcast. in the spring of 2013, i read stories on the Web with these headlines:
* Israel to Dismantle Settlements, Recognize Palestinian State
* United States to Destroy All Nuclear Warheads
* Sarah Palin Calls for Invasion of Czech Republic
* Republican Bill Demands Immigrants 'Americanize' Their Names
Not one of these stories was true. They sounded good, though. That is, they were written in conformity with journalistic style. in some cases, the stories also looked good. That is, the design of the webpage either imitated the style of legitimate news sites or was a nearly exact replica of a particular legitimate news site.
Such material is commonly referred to as fake news. i am going to argue that some fake news is folklore. it would then follow that the folkloric fake news that is created on and transmitted via computers-which is most of it-is a genre of digital folklore. but before i attempt to distinguish the fake news that is folklore from other kinds of fake news, i want to delineate the broader category of fake news, whether folkloric or not.
Journalism ethicists use the term "fake news" to refer to promotional material disguised as news.1 The kind of fake news i am concerned with here can be more broadly defined as intentionally false reports. The intentional dimension of fake news is critical to our definition because on occasion news organizations inadvertently deliver false reports, either because they are taken in by a hoax or they obtain information...