An Exploratory Study Of Malaysian Online Newspapers’ Representation Of Risks From Lynas Rare Earth Project (original) (raw)

From racial hoaxes to media hypes Fake news' real consequences

From Media Hype to Twitter Storm News Explosions and Their Impact on Issues, Crises, and Public Opinion Edited by Peter Vasterman, 2018

Racial hoaxes are becoming a popular discursive strategy to disguise racism, as well as a powerful means for triggering waves of fake news and outraged comments both on mainstream and social media. Built on grounds of plausibility and consistency with existing narratives, racial hoaxes may remain latent for a long time, and periodically emerge when negative stereotypes can be framed as actual news stories. Racial hoaxes have relevant political and social implications: spread across multiple channels, they can foster exclusionary discourse on immigration, migrants , refugees, and other minorities, with concrete consequences on people and policies. In particular, far-right movements embrace hoaxes as a great opportunity to advocate their claims and legitimate their calls for violent action. Theoretical background Racial hoaxes are becoming a popular discursive strategy to disguise racism. This concept has mainly been used in US legal and criminological fijields, aimed at exploring the connection between racial stereotypes and related practices in policing, and shifting criminal responsibility from a white offfender to a fijictional black predator (Russell, 1998). Nonetheless, this concept could be scrutinized from wider social and communicational perspectives, looking at how racial hoaxes are created and circulated, and how they afffect ethnic relations. The concept also provides powerful insights into study how prejudices and stereotypes are objectivized, and how hostility tales turn into social action. Moreover, racial hoaxes should be a relevant matter for communication studies, since they involve both mainstream and digital media, and have relevant consequences on public.