The Lying Society and Fake News in the City

Urban Communication Studies via Mixed Qualitative Data Analysis and Critical Artificial Intelligence Methodologies

Abstract

Purpose. Within contemporaneity, urban cultures and citizen cultural users experiences are contaminated by social and political information, often disseminated via digital media. The present essay intends to call attention on the relevance of debating propaganda, disinformation, and media manipulation inside the city cultural fabric. For such aim, firstly, it encompasses a theoretical debate on these issues, via recent questions, central concepts and credible hypotheses, in particular on the sciences, technologies and arts of fake news. Such discussion articulates three major axes, among other directions: (a) communication, journalism and fake news; (b) general propaganda and political campaigns; (c) Russian war on Ukraine. The present text aims to analyze the designated ‘Lying Society’, which, while present in many countries against the respective peoples, is reinforced today through the so-called ‘fake war’, produced by Russian Federation state, against an allegedly ‘fake country’, Ukraine, via fake news.

Method. This study uses a mixed method approach, by articulating QDA (Qualitative Data Analysis) and Critical Artificial Intelligence procedures, for interpreting social processes. The Ukrainian War has been conducted as a ‘hybrid war’, by Russian Federation. In fact, Putin’s military invasion is reinforced with violence perpetrated inside multiple (and some unprecedent) economic, social and cultural spheres, often acting as hybridized social realms. These social dimensions fusions occur among energy conflicts, climate aggressions, people impoverishment, mass kidnapping, genocide commitment, sexual violations, panoptism on citizens, opponents poisoning, human rights knock down, international law disrespect, democracies undermining, nuclear blackmail, heritage destruction, cultural annihilation, to name just a few. As a transversal and also hybrid realm, information and knowledge media discussions are articulating social fabric, through news and, in particular, fake news.  Within such broader context, social processes are analyzed here essentially via news and fake news contents and tactics, which make explicit the underlying core communication strategy named ‘hybrid war’, that provokes an unprecedent breed of global crisis. Fake news strategies use, among other communication tactics, alarmism, misinformation, factoids, big lies, post-truth politics, pseudohistory, fallacy of composition, etc. As for methodology and media sources, such investigation is conducted via a method developed by the author, named Hybrid Discourse Analysis, that uses tools as an Alphabet of Interconceptual Relationships and social-semantic networks. The selected corpus of sources includes texts, images, videos and digital media, on the risky global war rising in local Ukraine. However, the present text discusses just the tip of the iceberg, that is, a case study about 4 Wikipedia pages on Fake News and some related ideas, which is only a part of the whole project sample.

Results. One of the research outcomes is a Mini-Encyclopedia of Global Fake News, here solely sketched. The whole sample constitutes an unprecedented archive and memory of news wars based on war news. Such project is being developed within a Virtual Sociological Museum, to be consulted by diverse audiences’ profiles, e.g., researchers, professors, students, citizens, tourists and social marginalities (migrants, retired, disabled people).

Urban Cultural Studies; urban fake news; Lying Society; Critical Artificial Intelligence; Ukraine hybrid war; Hybrid Discourse Analysis; Mini-Encyclopedia of Global Fake News