TY - JOUR

T1 - Facts, values, and the epistemic authority of journalism

T2 - How journalists use and define the terms fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation

AU - Farkas, Johan

AU - Schousboe, Sabina

PY - 2024

Y1 - 2024

N2 - In this article, we examine how journalists try to uphold ideals of objectivity, clarity, and epistemic authority when using four overlapping terms: fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation. Drawing on 16 qualitative interviews with journalists in Denmark, our study finds that journalists struggle to convert the ideals of clarity and objectivity into a coherent conceptual practice. Across interviews, journalists disagree on which concepts to use and how to define them, accusing academics of producing too technical definitions, politicians of diluting meaning, and journalistic peers of being insufficiently objective. Drawing on insights from journalism scholarship and rhetorical argumentation theory, we highlight how such disagreements reveal a fundamental tension in journalistic claims to epistemic authority, causing a continuous search for unambiguous terms, which in turn produces the very ambiguity that journalists seek to avoid.

AB - In this article, we examine how journalists try to uphold ideals of objectivity, clarity, and epistemic authority when using four overlapping terms: fake news, junk news, misinformation, and disinformation. Drawing on 16 qualitative interviews with journalists in Denmark, our study finds that journalists struggle to convert the ideals of clarity and objectivity into a coherent conceptual practice. Across interviews, journalists disagree on which concepts to use and how to define them, accusing academics of producing too technical definitions, politicians of diluting meaning, and journalistic peers of being insufficiently objective. Drawing on insights from journalism scholarship and rhetorical argumentation theory, we highlight how such disagreements reveal a fundamental tension in journalistic claims to epistemic authority, causing a continuous search for unambiguous terms, which in turn produces the very ambiguity that journalists seek to avoid.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - fake news

KW - junk news

KW - disinformation

KW - desinformation

KW - misinformation

KW - falske nyheder

KW - journalistik

KW - Valg

KW - Folketingsvalg

KW - Europaparlamentsvalg 2019

KW - objektivitiet

KW - fake news

KW - junk news

KW - disinformation

KW - misinformation

KW - journalism

KW - objektivity

KW - elections

KW - Denmark

KW - Danish elections

KW - rhetorical argumentation

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - fake news

KW - falske nyheder

KW - junk news

KW - misinformation

KW - disinformation

KW - desinformation

KW - journalistik

KW - folketingsvalg

KW - Europaparlamentsvalg 2019

KW - valg

KW - objektivitiet

KW - fake news

KW - junk news

KW - misinformation

KW - disinformation

KW - journalism

KW - objectivity

KW - elections

KW - denmark

KW - national elections

U2 - 10.2478/nor-2024-0016

DO - 10.2478/nor-2024-0016

M3 - Journal article

VL - 45

SP - 137

EP - 157

JO - N O R D I C O M Review

JF - N O R D I C O M Review

SN - 1403-1108

IS - 1

ER -