ABSTRACT

The terms ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ have lost their shock value in today’s public discourse and seem to have become part of our normal political vocabulary. Fake news, mis- and disinformation are not a problem of a particular country but are found in politics around the world. In this paper, I look at how disinformation appears as a problem for democracy. Empirically, this paper explores dominant patterns of argumentation with a focus on the US, Germany and Czechia. I discuss the themes of media literacy, hybrid warfare and the emergence of fringe media. This paper argues that more attention needs to be paid to the affectual dimension of why people share fake news. Even though there is no easy solution for dealing with fake news, a first step is to stop denouncing people for believing in fake news and putting all our hope in media literacy.

摘要

“假新闻”和“另类事实”这两个词在今天的公共话语中已经失去了震撼力，似乎已经成为我们正常政治词汇的一部分。假新闻、错误信息和虚假信息不是某个特定国家的问题，而是在世界各地的政治中随处可见。在本文中，我研究了虚假信息如何成为民主问题。从经验上讲，本文探讨了主要的论证模式，重点是美国、德国和捷克。我讨论了媒体素养、混合战争和边缘媒体的出现等主题。本文认为，需要更多地关注人们分享假新闻的情感维度。尽管没有简单的方法来处理假新闻，