doxa.comunicación | nº 26, pp. 211-235 | 213

January-June 2018

How to confront fake news through news literacy? State of the art José Manuel Pérez Tornero, Sally Samy Tayie, Santiago Tejedor y Cristina Pulido

ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978

1. Introduction

Fake news has erupted into the political debate in recent years, consequently journalism and academic studies about journalism and media too. Trump’s surprising election to president of the United States (2016), the referendums regarding Great Britain’s exit from the European Union (2016), the plebiscite about the peace agreement in Colombia (2016) or the Russian State’s alleged tampering in the French presidential election campaigns (2017) and the Catalonian autonomous community elections (2017) as well as the increase in populist, nationalist and xenophobic movements in different European countries, manifested in the formation of the Italian government (2018) have demonstrated the vulnerability and weakness in democratic political systems. It has also shown an increase in the intentional and systematic manipulation of information. Therefore there have been innumerable news reports, research, studies and essays published on this matter. As as a result, there have also been many proposals and initiatives that have attempted to tackle a phenomenon considered by a broad consensus to be a severe threat to the democratic system

The impact of fake news has been so significant that it has not only strengthened the debate about the need to reform political systems- especially election campaigns- but it has also led to the emergence of a new theoretical and practical field within studies of communication, media, and journalism. Fake news, disinformation, propaganda or indoctrination are studied within this field as well as hate speech, the culture of controversy (Tannem, 1999) or the degeneration of political language (Thompson, 2016). Different knowledge from varying disciplines such as media theories, political science, semiotics, discourse analysis, etc. has converged.

However, the most significant aspect in this process is that these debates and new theoretical approaches have resulted in the emergence of a specific area of media literacy, which until recently had little relevance. We are referring to the field of news literacy1.

2. Methodology

This paper is the result of revising classic theorists’ contributions as well as recently published scientific articles related to the subject matter. The selection of documents has been carried out following a criterion of relevance and quality.

We will briefly and succinctly describe the theoretical and conceptual basis of the studies regarding fake news. Basic concepts in this new area known as news literacy are explained through an analysis of the primary published bibliography on it. In doing so, we will highlight some significant policy examples that correspond to this new subject discipline.