Abstract
We propose a generative model of the legend. The model is elaborated based on two case studies, the first of contemporary storytelling related to vaccination on parenting blogs, and the second of historical storytelling related to witchcraft and folk healing in nineteenth century Denmark. The model reveals the interdependent levels of the multiscale model, solving a problem of poor fit related to many two level models of folklore genre structure. The model supports the study of rumor, and the dynamics of storytelling, including the hyperactive transmission state of “viral” stories.
Highlights
The oxymoron “fake news” is part of popular parlance
While it is generally accepted that the press focuses on informed reporting of things that have happened and that can be independently verified, storytelling in everyday life, which includes social media and websites disguised as news sources, is not constrained by any such goals
The Pizzagate stories activated and reinforced this newly emergent narrative framework, while allowing for a degree of drift: new actants and relationships, along with events were proposed, negotiated, accepted or trimmed away as the stories and story parts circulated on social networks
Summary
The oxymoron “fake news” is part of popular parlance. Used pejoratively on the one hand by Donald Trump and his extremist acolytes in their attempts to discredit the free press, and descriptively on the other hand by journalists and other pundits to describe the deliberate circulation of hoaxes masquerading as legitimate journalism, the phrase acknowledges the prospect that reported news might not be an unbiased recounting of actual events, but rather an ideologically biased retelling of events, real or not. “Pizzagate”, was based entirely on an ideologically-driven fiction that was presented through a series of stories told as true, in which high ranking members of the Democratic establishment were alleged to be involved in a child-sex ring operating out of the basement of a Washington DC pizza parlor. In both cases—albeit for different reasons—access to information detailing the underlying events was Humanities 2018, 7, 1; doi:10.3390/h7010001 www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities.
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