Dezinformacja. Próba ujęcia dyskursywnego

Abstract

The categories of disinformation and fake news are among the more frequently invoked concepts in the context of discussions about modernity. On the one hand, there is widespread agreement on the special (negative) role of media phenomena defined in this way, while on the other hand, a lot of research is being conducted to shed light on their nature and principles of operation. Meanwhile, there is a fundamental – at least from the point of view of the social sciences – problem with these concepts. Namely, we do not have their precise definitions. The presented text has the task of analyzing the state of affairs in this regard and proposing an adequate approach. This approach, in fact, identifies the category of disinformation with the category of fake news (in the broader sense), while pointing out the constitutive features of both these phenomena, related to the categories of truth, intention and media format. These features are analyzed in the context of the category of the media genre of information (more specifically, the information function understood in a pragmatic way) and the discursive framework of journalism, into which, as will be shown in the text, disinformation attempts to intrude.