Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 317-341 |
Number of pages | 25 |
Journal | New media & society |
Volume | 22 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 20 Jan 2020 |
DOIs | |
Accepted/In press | 14 Mar 2019 |
E-pub ahead of print | 20 Jan 2020 |
Published | 1 Feb 2020 |
Additional links |
Fake News as Infrastructural_GRAY_Accepted14March2019_Published20January2020_GOLD VoR (CC BY)
Fake_News_as_Infrastructural_GRAY_Accepted14March2019_Published20January2020_GOLD_VoR_CC_BY_.pdf, 2.34 MB, application/pdf
Uploaded date:28 Jan 2020
Version:Final published version
Licence:CC BY
In this article, we examine how the social disturbance precipitated by ‘fake news’ can be viewed as a kind of infrastructural uncanny. We suggest that the threat of problematic and viral junk news can raise existential questions about the routine circulation, engagement and monetisation of content through the Web and social media. Prompted by the unsettling effects associated with the ‘fake news’ scandal, we propose methodological tactics for exploring (1) the link economy and the ranking of content, (2) the like economy and the metrification of engagement and (3) the tracker economy and the commodification of attention. Rather than focusing on the misleading content of junk news, such tactics surface the infrastructural conditions of their circulation, enabling public interventions and experiments to interrogate, challenge and change their role in reconfiguring relations between different aspects of social, cultural, economic and political life.
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