Fake news and the seven sins of capital: a metaphorical analysis of vices in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Health crises spawn “sins” and moral deformities in society that are evident when they emerge but had seemed to be dormant to collective awareness before. Through the metaphor of the seven capital sins, the article analyzes the phenomenon of fake news in the social media and in the scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic: the lust of sensationalism through the seduction and exploitation of vulnerabilities associated with fear of death; gluttony for confirmatory contents that spread untruths in the attempt to turn versions into facts; the catechism of denialism, fueling wrath or hate in restrictive epistemic environments; the greed of new technologies in the attention economy through engagement as a new commodity; competition for the spotlights of media visibility and derived gains that incite pride and envy in researchers that confuse public meaning with fake research, in a cycle that feeds sensationalism, gluttony, hate, and greed in attention capitalism. Finally, sloth is portrayed as the capital sin of opting for communicative inaction. In the comfort of bubbles, people renounce dialogue out of aversion to dissent, settling for positions of epistemic comfort. In short, the fake news phenomenon in the COVID-19 pandemic is portrayed here as the convergence of various vices that materialize as misinformation, in the communicative vacuity of the moments in which we are obliged to address each other to share our worldviews.