72 Zombie Media
commentators, particularly in the light of assertions that Russian-backed
propaganda efforts may have had an important role to play in the final
result.
While the election of Trump has presented the most dramatic example of the role of digital and online technologies in the dissemination of
clearly false information, this chapter is more concerned with why such
technologies are perceived now as especially important for such propaganda. Indeed, if we replace the term fake news with propaganda (as indeed many commentators have done), then it is clear that, on one level,
there is nothing especially original about the (dis)information campaign
of 2016, which will undoubtedly take its place alongside other Presidential skulduggery, whether Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 denunciation
of the unprovoked attack on U.S. vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, Ronald
Reagan’s 1985 obfuscation of facts surrounding the sale of missiles to
Iran with cash then funding the contras in Nicaragua, or the lie by
James Polk in 1846 that Mexicans had killed Americans on U.S. soil,
an assertion that helped begin the Mexican–American War. Although
fake news may appear to be a twenty-first century phenomenon, spin is
at least as old as Julius Caesar’s portrayal of the Gauls as lawless barbarians or the defence of actions of the state by Roman historians such
as Titus Livius and Quintus Fabius Pictor. What is important about the
contemporary phenomenon of fake news is that it draws attention to
the dissemination of an alternative network of supposed “journalistic”
sources that have flourished outside the more traditional structures of
state-mediated or other public organisations. Alternative publications
– such as the samizdat journals in Soviet Russia – are not new, but
historically they have tended to be more limited in their reach than the
mainstream media. As Leona Toker has observed, in the case of the
Russian journalist, writer and Gulag prisoner, Varlam Shalamov, samizdat journals offered a fragmented – and often frustrating – route to
publication for politically sensitive views that were banned by authorities.
3
The new breed of alt-journalism operates under very different circumstances than that of post-war underground soviet publications and
it does not automatically supplant more traditional sources of the news,
but what is clear is that, as with the example of the 70news site cited
earlier, it is possible for it – if only momentarily – to eclipse mainstream
media for many consumers.
With the inauguration of Trump in January 2017, the term “fake
news” began to take on a very new life of its own, essentially becoming a
clarion call for Trump and his followers to attack any story that does not
satisfy their own agenda. What is important here is the means by which
technological changes to the dissemination of journalism in the past two
decades have created those conditions in which a substantial proportion
of readers are no longer certain of their sources, thus contributing to the
conditions in which fake news – both as false information purporting
commentators, particularly in the light of assertions that Russian-backed
propaganda efforts may have had an important role to play in the final
result.
While the election of Trump has presented the most dramatic example of the role of digital and online technologies in the dissemination of
clearly false information, this chapter is more concerned with why such
technologies are perceived now as especially important for such propaganda. Indeed, if we replace the term fake news with propaganda (as indeed many commentators have done), then it is clear that, on one level,
there is nothing especially original about the (dis)information campaign
of 2016, which will undoubtedly take its place alongside other Presidential skulduggery, whether Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 denunciation
of the unprovoked attack on U.S. vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, Ronald
Reagan’s 1985 obfuscation of facts surrounding the sale of missiles to
Iran with cash then funding the contras in Nicaragua, or the lie by
James Polk in 1846 that Mexicans had killed Americans on U.S. soil,
an assertion that helped begin the Mexican–American War. Although
fake news may appear to be a twenty-first century phenomenon, spin is
at least as old as Julius Caesar’s portrayal of the Gauls as lawless barbarians or the defence of actions of the state by Roman historians such
as Titus Livius and Quintus Fabius Pictor. What is important about the
contemporary phenomenon of fake news is that it draws attention to
the dissemination of an alternative network of supposed “journalistic”
sources that have flourished outside the more traditional structures of
state-mediated or other public organisations. Alternative publications
– such as the samizdat journals in Soviet Russia – are not new, but
historically they have tended to be more limited in their reach than the
mainstream media. As Leona Toker has observed, in the case of the
Russian journalist, writer and Gulag prisoner, Varlam Shalamov, samizdat journals offered a fragmented – and often frustrating – route to
publication for politically sensitive views that were banned by authorities.
3
The new breed of alt-journalism operates under very different circumstances than that of post-war underground soviet publications and
it does not automatically supplant more traditional sources of the news,
but what is clear is that, as with the example of the 70news site cited
earlier, it is possible for it – if only momentarily – to eclipse mainstream
media for many consumers.
With the inauguration of Trump in January 2017, the term “fake
news” began to take on a very new life of its own, essentially becoming a
clarion call for Trump and his followers to attack any story that does not
satisfy their own agenda. What is important here is the means by which
technological changes to the dissemination of journalism in the past two
decades have created those conditions in which a substantial proportion
of readers are no longer certain of their sources, thus contributing to the
conditions in which fake news – both as false information purporting