Abstract
In this article, we examine how the social disturbance precipitated by ‘fake news’ can be viewed as a kind of infrastructural uncanny. We suggest that the threat of problematic and viral junk news can raise existential questions about the routine circulation, engagement and monetisation of content through the Web and social media. Prompted by the unsettling effects associated with the ‘fake news’ scandal, we propose methodological tactics for exploring (1) the link economy and the ranking of content, (2) the like economy and the metrification of engagement and (3) the tracker economy and the commodification of attention. Rather than focusing on the misleading content of junk news, such tactics surface the infrastructural conditions of their circulation, enabling public interventions and experiments to interrogate, challenge and change their role in reconfiguring relations between different aspects of social, cultural, economic and political life.
Highlights
In this article, we examine how the social disturbance precipitated by ‘fake news’ can be viewed as a kind of infrastructural uncanny
We focus on the notion of the ‘infrastructural uncanny’ as a way to characterise the anxieties and questions that emerge in relation to the farming and circulation of junk news (Howard et al, 2017; Venturini, 2019; for discussions of junk news in the context of professional journalism see Harrington, 2008; McCartney, 1977)
Drawing on Latour’s (2008) notion of ‘scenographies’ which signals a shift from standalone ‘matters of fact’ to the conditions of their production, we propose methodological tactics for exploring the trouble of junk news
Summary
We examine how the social disturbance precipitated by ‘fake news’ can be viewed as a kind of infrastructural uncanny. A ‘clone’ of Le Soir, for instance, was used to propagate false claims about presidential candidate being financially backed by Saudi Arabia (Figure 1; CrossCheck, 2017) This was not the first time that a ‘second Le Soir’ was in circulation (Istas, 1993). The ‘Faux Soir’ made its way into official distribution channels and was sold through kiosks in Brussels Both cases involved meticulous reproduction of visual and editorial conventions of Le Soir which would make them ‘passable’: typefaces, images and layout. It is not just resemblance in content that we want to draw attention to and the different infrastructures involved in their production, distribution and monetisation. The copycat Le Soir of 2017 required a domain name, skills to clone the site and the means to distribute it on social media and other online ‘spaces’, including a posting on new media & society 22(2)
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