Abstract
Abstract Fake news is a worrying phenomenon which is growing increasingly widespread, partly because of the ease with which it is disseminated online. Combating the spread of fake news requires a clear understanding of the nature of fake news. However, the use of the term in everyday language is heterogenous and has no fixed meaning. Despite increasing philosophical attention to the topic, there is no consensus on the correct definition of “fake news” within philosophy either. This paper aims to bring clarity to the philosophical debate of fake news in two ways: Firstly, by providing an overview of existing philosophical definitions and secondly, by developing a new account of fake news. This paper will identify where there is agreement within the philosophical debate of definitions of “fake news” and isolate four key questions on which there is genuine disagreement. These concern the intentionality underlying fake news, its truth value, the question of whether fake news needs to reach a minimum audience, and the question of whether an account of fake news needs to be dynamic. By answering these four questions, I provide a novel account of defining “fake news”. This new definition hinges upon the fact that fake news has the function of being deliberately misleading about its own status as news.
Highlights
The topic of fake news has garnered increasingly widespread attention both within and outside of academia since the term has risen to prominence in the context of the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum of the same year
While I disagree with his interpretation of Frankfurtian bullshit, given that he includes almost all lies in it, this makes Mukerji’s definition more compatible with a view which states that fake news misleads in a broad sense, with the disagreement being largely terminological
While fake news is not a new phenomenon, it is becoming increasingly widespread, in part because of the ease with which it is disseminated online. This spread is a worrying trend and in order to combat fake news, we need a clearer understanding of the phenomenon
Summary
The topic of fake news has garnered increasingly widespread attention both within and outside of academia since the term has risen to prominence in the context of the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum of the same year. The Collins Dictionary even named “fake news” its word of the year in 2017, citing a 365% increase in use as one of the reasons (Flood 2017). Because of its relative novelty and skyrocketing attention from numerous different vantage points, the term’s meaning remains disputed and its use in everyday language is wildly heterogenous
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