Fake News as a Critical Incident in Journalism
From Digital Culture & Society
Tandoc, E. C., Jenkins, J., & Craft, S. (2019). Fake News as a Critical Incident in Journalism. Journalism Practice, 13(6), 673–689.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2018.1562958
Contents |
[edit] Context:
The Tandoc et al article is a qualitative analysis of newspaper editorials about “fake news” published in the U.S. This article discusses the journalist's perspective on fake news, disinformation and misinformation in the news and how it has been negatively affecting the industry. The authors shed light on how journalists have legitimized fake news by writing editorial pieces on such and how the term “fake news” is extremely ambiguous. This article focuses a lot on the complexity of the language used around disinformation and how that assists the confusion around the topic. This work aligns seamlessly with the overarching discussion of disinformation and how it has affected many sectors in today’s society.
[edit] Overview:
The three main themes of the research are that fake news was legitimized and recognized as a societal problem by journalists in the U.S. who wrote editorials on the topic. Secondly, they acknowledged that the term fake news is hard to define because of ambiguity. Lastly, they believe that the political environment and technological platforms are responsible for the spread of fake news. The authors came to these conclusions through qualitative analysis of 194 newspaper editorials from 27 different publications all selected through the search terms of “fake news” and “editorial”. Derived from their analysis was the conclusion that the spread of fake news and disinformation is a growing problem and has been referred to as a “global threat” and “is quickly becoming a scourge on informed citizenship”. This research delves into the official stance that publications have on fake news and how it has begun altering their industry.
[edit] Strengths and Weaknesses:
The strengths of this article come from the ability to discover the general opinions of publications and journalists on this topic that directly affects them. By only analyzing editorial pieces they are able to gain extensive insight. Editorials are coveted in the newspaper realm as there is typically only one published per issue, the topic also represents the news organization's official stance and the space is reserved for what the news organization considers to be the most important issue that needs to be tackled. As these are very carefully crafted pieces that are published they are worthy of further analysis. These publications are valuable to consider when it comes to the conversation of fake news and disinformation because they are the opinions of those who provided the original news and correct information to the masses. The strategic choice to analyze editorials from news publications allows for the exploration of the opinions on fake news within the journalism community and offers a unique vantage point into how pressing of an issue the spread of disinformation is to new organizations.
The weaknesses of this article are mentioned in the limitations. The article only analyzed newspaper editorials although the discussion of fake news happens in other spaces such as news articles. The inclusion of other discourses would have generated a larger sample size with more data to analyze and could have offered varying opinions on the topic. A weakness to consider is also the geographic area researched was only within the U.S. and could be expanded to North America or include other countries. Future research could be done on the conversation of fake news within news articles in comparison to new editorials and a larger geographic region. However, the analysis of the chosen group is highly beneficial in North American societies because of proximity and societal norms and values.
[edit] Assessment:
Tandoc et al provided a well-versed qualitative analysis of the rising issue of fake news in the world of journalism. This research provides a unique insight into the journalist's perspective on the topic and how news publications are influenced by such. Although facing some limitations the article provides room for expansion on the topic for future research. It is important to explore the relationship between disinformation and journalism because understanding how disinformation infiltrates the news space will provide insight into how to preserve media integrity. Tandoc et al explore how disinformation has shaped the world around it and how there are many complex layers involved in relation to journalism. Disinformation has created an immense threat to the journalism industry as more and more journalists and publications recognize such in editorial pieces. By acknowledging the pressing issue of fake news they have legitimized the part of the problem.
Ca19sp 17:04, 10 December 2023 (EST)
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