Mapping information and identifying disinformation based on digital humanities methods: From accuracy to plasticity

Abstract

Abstract The subject of Fake News has recently become very popular, with many articles, reports, and even academic events taking up this subject. However, media coverage remains generally quite superficial and the topic is often approached from the viewpoint of the ‘accuracy’ of the information. In this article, I would like to highlight the discursive dimension, which I believe to be crucial when looking at Fake News. I will therefore seek to approach this issue not from a true/false perspective, but rather by considering the processes of turning information into discourse, of handling and constructing social reality or referents. To this end, I shall first outline the contribution that the digital humanities can make to the analysis of meaning in corpora, and the way in which they can provide a means to objectively access interpretative processes within the information conveyed.