Facts, values, and the epistemic authority of journalism: How journalists use and define the terms fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation
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Facts, values, and the epistemic authority of journalism : How journalists use and define the terms fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation. / Farkas, Johan; Schousboe, Sabina.
In: Nordicom Review, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2024, p. 137-157.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Facts, values, and the epistemic authority of journalism
T2 - How journalists use and define the terms fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation
AU - Farkas, Johan
AU - Schousboe, Sabina
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - In this article, we examine how journalists try to uphold ideals of objectivity, clarity, and epistemic authority when using four overlapping terms: fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation. Drawing on 16 qualitative interviews with journalists in Denmark, our study finds that journalists struggle to convert the ideals of clarity and objectivity into a coherent conceptual practice. Across interviews, journalists disagree on which concepts to use and how to define them, accusing academics of producing too technical definitions, politicians of diluting meaning, and journalistic peers of being insufficiently objective. Drawing on insights from journalism scholarship and rhetorical argumentation theory, we highlight how such disagreements reveal a fundamental tension in journalistic claims to epistemic authority, causing a continuous search for unambiguous terms, which in turn produces the very ambiguity that journalists seek to avoid.
AB - In this article, we examine how journalists try to uphold ideals of objectivity, clarity, and epistemic authority when using four overlapping terms: fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation. Drawing on 16 qualitative interviews with journalists in Denmark, our study finds that journalists struggle to convert the ideals of clarity and objectivity into a coherent conceptual practice. Across interviews, journalists disagree on which concepts to use and how to define them, accusing academics of producing too technical definitions, politicians of diluting meaning, and journalistic peers of being insufficiently objective. Drawing on insights from journalism scholarship and rhetorical argumentation theory, we highlight how such disagreements reveal a fundamental tension in journalistic claims to epistemic authority, causing a continuous search for unambiguous terms, which in turn produces the very ambiguity that journalists seek to avoid.
KW - Faculty of Humanities
KW - fake news
KW - junk news
KW - disinformation
KW - desinformation
KW - misinformation
KW - falske nyheder
KW - journalistik
KW - Valg
KW - Folketingsvalg
KW - Europaparlamentsvalg 2019
KW - objektivitiet
KW - fake news
KW - junk news
KW - disinformation
KW - misinformation
KW - journalism
KW - objektivity
KW - elections
KW - Denmark
KW - Danish elections
KW - rhetorical argumentation
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - fake news
KW - falske nyheder
KW - junk news
KW - misinformation
KW - disinformation
KW - desinformation
KW - journalistik
KW - folketingsvalg
KW - Europaparlamentsvalg 2019
KW - valg
KW - objektivitiet
KW - fake news
KW - junk news
KW - misinformation
KW - disinformation
KW - journalism
KW - objectivity
KW - elections
KW - denmark
KW - national elections
U2 - 10.2478/nor-2024-0016
DO - 10.2478/nor-2024-0016
M3 - Journal article
VL - 45
SP - 137
EP - 157
JO - N O R D I C O M Review
JF - N O R D I C O M Review
SN - 1403-1108
IS - 1
ER -
ID: 389305419