Speaker: Aldo Frigerio (Catholic University of Milan) & Ciro De Florio (Catholic University of Milan). As part of the Polpost Meetings
Abstract: It is hard overestimate the importance of fake news in the present understanding of social, political, and economical reality. The aim of this article is to provide a clarification of the concept of fake news. We argue that fake news has a twofold nature and that the difficulty in their characterization lies exactly in this dual character. Fake news are, indeed, produced in a certain way and, then, they are transmitted. Our thesis is that the modality of communication of fake news affects their nature: we will argue that fake news in as much as produced are particular forms of false assertions – kind of lies. Fake news in as much as received and re-transmitted are, on the other hand, pseudo-assertions which have no cognitive value but they are the expressions of certain attitudes and feelings. This twofold characterization is able to provide an explanation of two phenomena: the former concerns the often observed conceptual tension in studies about fake news: from one hand, fake news are considered, in fact, fake and therefore they misconceive reality. From the other hand, however, there is the tendency to distinguish fake news from lies or simply false news. According to us, this because, in one case, fake news are construed as fabricated, while, in the other case, fake news are considered as widespread. Once fixed this point, the conceptual tension disappears. The second phenomenon our account is aiming to explain is fake news peculiar resistance to debunking: the second nature of fake news, that is pseudo-assertions which express attitudes and feelings, grounds their resistance to debunking. We argue that fake news in this sense are lacking of proper cognitive content and therefore they cannot enter within usual processes of belief revision.