Rethinking Fake News: Disinformation and Ideology during the time of COVID-19 Global Pandemic

Ronnie Das; Wasim Ahmed

doi:10.1177/22779752211027382

Rethinking Fake News: Disinformation and Ideology during the time of COVID-19 Global Pandemic

Ronnie Das, Wasim Ahmed

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

26 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Digital media and citizen journalism has escalated the infiltration of fake news attempting to create a post truth society (Lazer et al., 2018). The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a surge of misinformation leading to anti-mask, anti-vaccine and anti-5G protests on a global scale. Although the term ‘misinformation’ has been generalized in media and scholarly work, there is a fundamental difference between how misinformation impacts society, compared to more strategically planned disinformation attacks. In this study we explore the ideological constructs of citizens towards acceptance or rejection of disinformation during the heightened time of a COVID-19 global health crisis. Our analysis follows two specific disinformation propagandas evaluated through social network analysis of Twitter data in addition to qualitative insights generated from tweets and in-depth interviews.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	146-159
Number of pages	14
Journal	IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review
Volume	11
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/22779752211027382
Publication status	Published - Jan 2022
Externally published	Yes

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Rethinking Fake News: Disinformation and Ideology during the time of COVID-19 Global Pandemic

Abstract

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