Abstract
This chapter seeks to draw on the theoretical framework of fandom to examine the evaluation of information used in online political debate as well as the use of the fake news label. Fake news has received increasing scholarly attention, however, the majority of this research has focused on fake news as a genre, or the deliberate creation of pseudojournalistic disinformation. Drawing on the interview and survey data, I will now argue that the phenomenon of fake news has a role in polarization in two important ways: If we understand an individual’s investment in their political identity as fan-like, then that affective investment informs how they interpret the information they find and share. Secondly, the use of the fake news label is a discursive tactic of performance in online political discussion to distinguish from and malign the perceived other.
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Notes
- 1.
All excerpts from interviews and surveys have been provided in italics and indented for ease of identification.
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Barnes, R. (2022). ‘Fake news,’ Polarization and Fan-like Behaviours. In: Fandom and Polarization in Online Political Discussion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14039-6_6
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