Abstract
Disguised as news, CTs have recently been blazing on both sides of the Atlantic. Fake news is the deliberate publication of fictitious communication, often spread for a political purpose. In this chapter, Bergmann analyses how populist political CTs are transmitted. A recent decline in trust of mainstream media and the increased importance of online media has proved to be a fertile ground for the spread of CTs. These modern mediums have, over a very short span of time, provided the public with unprecedented and unhindered access to a wide range of unscrutinised information. This overflow of information can leave us incapable of interpreting it properly. This opens up a space for misinformation to thrive in a new environment, which has been branded Post-Truth politics. In this chapter, Bergmann analyses the spread of conspiratorial fake news stories in the British Brexit debate, around Donald Trump in the USA and those upheld in Putin’s Russia.
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Bergmann, E. (2018). Transmission and Fake News. In: Conspiracy & Populism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90359-0_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90359-0_7
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