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LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF FAKE NEWS AS A GENRE OF MASS MEDIA
DISCOURSE
Jo’ramurotova Sarvinoz Otabekovna, student of
Uzbek State World Languages University scientific
advisor: Mamatqulova F.A.
Abstract:
This article deals with the review of linguistic features and research on fake
news as mass media discourse. So, firstly, we should investigate the growth and impact
of fake news gained public's attention in recent years. However, there is a wide range
of developed technology items to detect fake contents, either those human-based
approaches or machine-based approaches. The purpose of this analytic study of media
news language is to investigate and identify the linguistic features and their contribution
in analyzing data to detect, filter, and differentiate between fake and authentic news
texts.
Key words
: fake news, identity, public discourse, net-work analysis, linguistic analysis,
computational methods, Twitter, social media, political communication
Today’s results show that linguistic features, especially grammatical features,
help determine untrustworthy texts and demonstrate that most of the test news tends to
be unreliable articles. Recently, fake news has attracted worldwide attention and
multiplied organized efforts dedicating to fact-checking. Results show that they
attempted to counter online misinformation transmit raises in media outlets.
It is seemed that fake news detection is the projection of a news article to be
intentionally deceiving. It is not a new idea, but what makes it a world attractive topic
is that most people worldwide get their news from social media as it breaks the distance
barriers among individuals and societies .On the other hand, it is the easiest, cheapest,
and fastest way to publish fake news online, promoting entities to create, print, and
spread fake news.
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In recent years, fake news for different commercial and political purposes has
been emerged widely in online social networks causing real-world influences within
minutes for a considerable number of users. These immense effects of fake news
demand a real and improve the information’s trustworthiness. In the meantime, Fake
news was highlighted and became a serious threat to journalism, democracy, expression
freedom and it reflects public’s trust in governments. The chance to deceive or to be
deceived becomes more and more during news production and one of the ways of
consumption.
We can study fake news from three perspectives such as fake news writing style,
how fake news spread, and users: how users participate in fake news and the role users
can play in all these perspectives.
In this article, I aim to revisit some key issues in approaches to research on mass
media texts from a discourse analytical perspective and to present a rationale as well as
a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework for analysis of mass media discourse.
I then consider a number of areas of critical research interest in mass media discourse
locally and elsewhere. Despite the advances in mass communication and associated
smart social media technologies and related media product spinoffs over the years, it
appears that mass media research probably began to merge with discourse/language
analyses [1, 125p]
Most authors argue that fake news ‘mimics news media content in form and is
thus presented in a journalistic format. Considering the literal meaning, fake news does
not simply mean false news but should be understood as an imitation of news. Thus,
fake news consists of similar structural components: a headline, a text div, and a
picture. Although most studies do not consider these forms, journalistic presentation
can also involve video and radio news formats. By doing so, the information is presented
under the false pretence that it resulted from journalistic research that follows certain
professional standards. As a result, recipients might misattribute fake news articles as
genuine and credible news articles. Importantly, apart from the visual appearance of a
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news article, ‘through the use of news bots, fake news imitates news’ by building a
network of fake sites’ [2, 135p]
Based on the assumption that no one produces inaccurate information in the style
of news articles, we also suggest in line with several scholars that the fake news genre
is created deliberately with an intention to deceive. Arguably, this can be seen as a
‘defining element of fake news. Most scholars agree that the main motivations for
deception are either political or financial. However, it is also possible that fake news is
created for humorous reasons, to entertain, or as Wardle dubs it, ‘to provoke’. In the
context of intent, it is important to distinguish between two different processes: the
creation of fake news and its dissemination The creation of the fake news genre is
always intentional, while the dissemination may be unintentional.
According to the news, the conceptual boundaries of “fake news” have been
evolving. Before Donald Trump reintroduced the term in 2016, one of the earliest
appearances of “fake news” in American media history was associated with yellow
journalism in the late 19th century. Writing in Arena, an influential monthly at the time,
used “fake news” and “fake journalism” to describe “the most sensational stories” in
metropolitan Sunday papers that were “absolutely false” and could “mislead an ignorant
or unsuspecting public” [3, 152p]
When thinking of this third characteristic, some thoughts on the potential source
of fake news are warranted. The most obvious source of fake news are websites that are
developed and ‘dedicated solely to propagating fake news’. ‘ They are pseudo
journalistic and short-lived, as ‘they do not attempt to build a long-term reputation for
quality, but rather maximize the short-run profits from attracting clicks in an initial
period’ . While some websites emerged earlier, a ‘tipping point’ was reached, and a
large amount of fake news originated from these sites . By pretending to be legitimate
news sources, these websites also perform with the intention to deceive their users.
Analysis of media linguistic practices in the space of fake media reality shows
us the following types of fake materials:
-within the social network Facebook, fake accounts and fake profiles are created
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to represent a profile on the social network of a fictitious person or a person who exists
in reality, but created by another person ;
-pages of fake sites are created on social networks with distorted or completely
false information about facts, events and phenomena for various unfavorable purposes,
for example, for the purposes of striving for cheap popularity, personal data theft,
manipulative influence, striving for profit.
-fake video and sound recordings are edited and actively placed in the mass
media, through which the memories of the target audience are manipulated.
-in turn, fabricated photo, video, and sound recordings can contribute to the
formation of the so-called. false memories associated with a false or distorted perception
of those events and facts that may never happened in reality.[4]
This study aims to introduce qualitative and quantitative analytic research on the
language articles in the context of fake news detection. First, the authors attempt to
examine and identify the real articles’ linguistic features, then compared them with the
linguistic features of a set of chosen news articles to identify its trustworthiness. In this
paper, the authors proposed a linguistic-based fake news detection method. This method
focuses on analyzing and investigating the news articles’ content structure and style
based on the texts’ linguistic characteristics to differentiate between fake and real news.
In the modern world information plays an important part both in the life of
individuals, groups and communities, that is why great attention should be paid to the
authenticity of the information .It is for this reason that it is important to develop a really
acting fake detection mechanism in mass media products.
References:
1.
Abdullah, F. S. (2004). Prolegomena to a discursive model of Malaysian national
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Abdullah, F. S. (2008). Paradoxes of the ‘glocal’ selfin the new world (dis)order:
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the national identity project. In F. S. Abdullah, M. H. Abdullah & B.H. Tan
(Eds.), Critical perspectives on language and discourse in the New World Order
(pp.38-70). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
3.
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Communication, 42(2), 151-169.
4.
Bhatia, V. K. (2004). Worlds of written discourse.London: Continuum. Bloor,
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introduction. London: Hodder Arnold
