Available online at www.sserr.ro Social Sciences and Education Research Review (6) 2 257-279 (2019) ISSN 2393–1264 ISSN–L 2392–9863 **2016 THE BACKGROUND OF FAKE NEWS: THROUGH WHAT THEORY CAN WE UNDERSTAND THE 2016 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION** Ștefan VLĂDUȚESCU[1] , Dan Valeriu VOINEA[2] 1 Professor, PhD, CCSCMOP, University of Craiova, Romania 2Senior Lecturer, PhD, CCSCMOP, University of Craiova, Romania ## **Abstract** The study starts from the finding that starting with 2016 in the journalistic, strategic and academic, state and independent media, there are intense, wide and contradictory debates regarding the fake news phenomenon. The present investigation constitutes a composite research: a) it marks the voluntary and / or involuntary contribution of Donald Trump to putting in the agenda of technical, political and theoretical the concerns of fake news and declaring our age as "the age of fake news", b) it asks questions about the possibility of technical and theoretical control of fake news, c) we find that the big theories regarding public opinion and media influence are inapplicable to this social phenomenon and d) ask questions about a potential, future theory that can describe and explain optimally the fake news phenomenon. The working method is complex, combining meta-analytical, comparative procedures and the history of concepts. 257 From the review of the most significant theories of media effects (one step flow, two steps flow, spiral of silence and agenda-setting with its "forms" - framing and priming) it appears that most of them have been elaborated by following close observation of some electoral campaigns: except for the spiral of silence it was always about the American presidential campaigns. The bottom line is that these theories cannot give a satisfactory explanation of the fake news phenomenon and the success of Donald Trump's US presidential campaign .As such, it appears necessary in the future to configure a comprehensive theory that a) describes and explains the blow given by Donald Trump and b) evaluates and norms the behaviour of generating fake news. Finally, for a future research the idea that the irradiating core of fake news is a factoid and / or a factlet must be taken into account. **Keywords:** fake news, factoid, 2016 US Presidential election, Donald Trump ## **1. INTRODUCTION: WE HAVE NOT SEEN THE BEGINNING OF** ## **THE WORLD, BUT WE CAN ENJOY THE VIEW OF ITS END** Two fundamental psychological tendencies make our lives full of interest, relevance and significance. The first tendency is to believe that the times we live in are important for the beginning of the history of the world, they are turning, they are critical, they are decisive, they are striking, they are explosive, they are dangerous, they are jumping, they are of assault, they are of war, they are the beginning of the era or the beginning of unpredictable change. The second tendency is to believe that if we have not caught the beginning, then our present life is unfolding at important moments for the end of history: we, here, we missed the beginning of the world, but we catch the happy ending of it. The attitude that covers and somehow mitigates the irrepressible functioning of these tendencies is that "of course, as you can see, nothing is new under the sun." 258 From this perspective, a phenomenon like the one called "fake news" doesn't appear as being new under the sun and somehow it really isn't. We do not go into well-known details about the etymology and historical evolution of the phrase. We will mention only a sequence in which it was used with accuracy and discernment to say something about reality. Thus we want to reinforce P. Levinson's (2019) argument that the "fake news" phenomenon is not so new: "Fake news has been with us for centuries and indeed had great impact in the American election of 2016" As concrete inductions of the generalities outlined above, we set out a few examples. On April 11, 2016, Alex Kantrowitz (in the article "Facebook Wanted A Fight Against Fake News" in "Buzz Feed News") showed: "In many ways, it is the golden age of fake news." Without a direct connection with the exaltation of the "fake news age" and without necessarily a direct echo, the reverberating sumptuousness of the moment was also marked by other specialists such as "age of fake news", "fake news era" (Tandoc Jr. et al. ., 2017; August, 2018; Brites et al., 2018), an era in which "The Emergence of a Post-Fact World" (Fukuyama, 2017) , a "fake news war" (Feher, 2017; Booth , 2017).Our astral age is also called "the post-truth era" (Keyes, 2004), "age of post-truth" (Hasian, 2019), "the age of turbulence" (Greenspan, 2008), "post-factual age "," Postfaktisches Zeitalter "(Stegherr, 2018, p. 347)" the digital age "(Boyer, 2013; Frunza, 2019)," digital age "(Coman, 2017)," the internet era "(Teodorescu, 2016) , "The internet age" (Lazer et al., 2018) , "age of fake news and post-truth" (Potter, 2019), "the misinformation age" (O'Connor & Weatherall, 2019).There is also talk of 'A post-Western age', 'Post-Truth, Post-West, Post-Order' , concepts which we do not know with absolute accuracy who to attribute to, but which also say something about the effervescence of the moment.Clearly, confidently and distinctly after 2016 a new concept emerged: fake news era (Albright, 2017; Berghel, 2017; Muckle, 2017) 259 In addition, obviously, the debate is outgoing. We are finding new theoretical frameworks, interpretative perspectives, in different critical paradigms and we see different "eras". In fact, we should be during the same ontological "age" (as terms, notions, concepts, classifications, taxonomies, etc.), even if our epistemiological, methodological or axiological lenses are of different point of view or focus. We believe that these are signs that we are in one of the important moments of humanity. These signs must be decoded, deciphered and decrypted on the idea that a theory is needed that correctly, judiciously and verifiably describes the facts and explain them coherently, secondarily, objectively in the order of the real; then, to create a simple and unitary perspective on them that makes them easily comprehensible and controllable in practical order. ## **2. ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF TECHNICAL AND THEORETICAL CONTROL OF FAKE NEWS** There are visible phenomena, noticeable phenomena, detectable phenomena, but there are also invisible phenomena.In the human body, about one million chemical reactions take place every second: some of them are visible, most of them are hidden. Similarly, millions of phenomena occur in the social body at any given moment: they are partly visible and largely invisible. The iceberg metaphor is very revealing. The major problems of the moment are how to avoid ourselves, how to fight, how to stop through sociology, psychology and techonology the fake news phenomenon. Some of the technical and ideal solutions were outlined by Mark Zuckerberg before appearing in front of a committee of the two chambers of the US Congress on April 11-12, 2018 (Zuckerberg, 2018a) and in the answers given to members of Congress (Zuckerberg). , 2018b).He stated, among other things, that as a creator and CEO of Facebook he feels responsible for the 260 inconveniences that some of the Facebook members were subjected to, and stated: “It's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. (…) That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. ” Facebook will seek to secure as much as technologically possible the defusing of fake news, especially in election campaigns.Securing is a good thing, with some limitations: the activity of identifying and deleting accounts, websites, articles on the Internet "raises important questions about who becomes the arbiter of truth" (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017, p. 233). In order to preserve the freedom of opinion and the freedom of expression as fundamental inalienable rights, on the other hand, it is necessary that the fake news phenomenon a) be studied, understood and b) we must act socially in order to impregnate intangible social values (such as honesty, honesty, fairness, good faith, common sense, goodwill, etc.) in users of digital networks and platforms. The most important thing is to correclty understand the phenomenon of fake news with its political, social, economic, strategic roots, with the "opportunities and challenges" created by the weakening and discrediting of journalism, by the generation of fake news journalists themselves. We wonder if the stages of such a process could not be the description, the detailed and objective study of the phenomenon, the interpretation of the phenomenon, the identification of theories with explanatory impact and / or the emergence of new theories that explain the articulations of the concept, the mechanism of the processes of development. generating fake news, with implicit opportunities for detaching fake news inhibition procedures. We also wonder whether the understanding of fake news should start from the idea of persuasion and from decoding fake news as persuasive interventions. 261 ## **3. WHAT THEORY COVERS THE ELECTION OF PRESIDENT** ## **DONALD TRUMP?** According to the US Election Atlas https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/ , Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, gaining 48.02% compared to Donald Trump - 45.93%.By contrast, Donald Trump has won electoral votes, with 56.5% of the electors on his side, compared to 42.2% who were on Hillary Clinton's side. Voting is a decision that can also be stimulated by the media. Media effects are defined by "The processes and products of media influence that act directly on targets (individuals and macro units of society and institutions) as well as indirectly on targets through other units" (Potter, 2012, p. 47). a) The one step flow theory based mainly on the research of Harold Lasswell (in particular by "Propaganda Technique in the World War", 1927) is presented in the form of two metaphors (the "magic bullet" and "hypodermic needle"). It says that the message with which the audience is "shot" or "injected" has a rapid, unmitigated, direct effect. In his novel "The War of the Worlds" (1898), HG Wells imagines a Martian invasion of Earth. On Sunday, October 30, 1938, at 8 pm over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network, directed by Orson Welles, a radio adaptation of the SF novel "The War of the Worlds" was broadcast with a small talk by the director; one of them was a news bulletin stating that an unusual object had landed on a farm in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Millions of Americans who did not watch the "radio show" step by step took the invasion of the American territory by the Martians seriously. The show had a direct and rapid effect: it created a panic that was difficultly subsequently defused by official communications. This media event is one of the examples that illustrates the validity of the one step flow theory. In 2015 it was associated with fake news (Schwartz, 2015). 262 If the fake news effect had been direct, then Donald Trump would have been elected by the "injected" majority: but the popular vote was won by Hillary Clinton. According to the one step flow theory, if fake news were injected for Donald Trump, then he would have won the popular vote. b) The 32nd President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, is known to have ruled the US from 1933 until his death in 1945, and served four terms. The 1940 US presidential election seems to be the most important and controversial election in US history. Although by the decision of the first US President George Washington (subsequently amended to US Constitution 22) it was established that a president could benefit from no more than two terms, in 1940 Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a third term. His opponent was the powerful businessman Wendell Willkie who had one of the campaign messages showing that George Washington's decision tended to not be respected and that in this way the path of dictatorship was opened: “if one man is indispensable, then none of us is free ”(Public Paper, State Printers, 1944, p. 749). Several other messages against FDR were machinegunned by the propaganda attributed to Wendell Willkie. Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet investigated the voting patterns, the relationship between the media and the conquest of political power, the process of voting in the election campaign, and whether the "magic bullet" theory - had a "hypodermic needle model theory" effect. . They found that the majority of voters remained cold to the negative media propaganda toward Roosevelt, but they reacted to personal influences. They understood that the media did not have a direct effect and that the flow of information from the media went to the opinion leaders, and from them, through them, the flow reached the general public. They published these findings in the book "The People's Choice." How the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign ”(1944): they formulated and argued the two-step flow of communication. They clarified that media effects are the result 263 of a two-step process: some opinion leaders who have been exposed to media influence transmit messages to the general public and only now media effects are produced on a large scale. Influence is mediated by personal influence (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955; Katz, 1957). Donald Trump was not elected president by the population without a socalled discernment that received and distributed fake news, but by electors. Fake news was not specifically addressed to the electors. Therefore according to two steps flow theory, without the first flow, it (theory) cannot be applied; without a flow we have only one step. However, voters who know in advance what to vote for and who are well informed in the secondary do not react to unverified, doubtful, counterfeit news, fake news. However, they decided the president. The two steps flow theory is not applicable. c) In December 1964, in West Germany, E. Noelle-Neumann (who led the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research) together with his colleagues launched a set of questionnaires to reveal the political views of the electorate in relation to the September 19, 1965 elections. . These were elections for the 5th Bundestag, which faced the Christian Democratic Union - Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU) and Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP). Each month, the team repeated the same questionnaire. It was noted that almost nothing had changed in terms of voting intentions, each party being chosen by about 45% of those polled. In August 1965 the poll showed a radical change in the situation: the voting intention for the Christian Democratic Union - Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU) rose to 50%, and the voting intention for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP) fell below 40%. The final result of the elections showed 48% for the Christian Democratic Union - Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU) and 39% for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP). E. Noelle-Neumann analyzed the events and understood that the reception by Chancellor Christian Democratic on the visit of the Queen of Great 264 Britain in May 1965 created a dose of optimism for Christian Democratic Union – Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU) supporters and prompted them to publicly affirms their political ideas through the media. Under these circumstances, the supporters of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP) felt discouraged to assert their political ideas, thus they became quieter. Thus a process of silence that has been configured ("a process that can be called a spiral of silence"): "observations made in one context in the spiraling process, the one view dominated the public scene and the other disappeared from public awareness as its adherents became mute ”(Noelle-Neumann, 1984, p.5). Researching the 2009 Romanian Presidential Campaign, Oana Ștefăniță (2011, p. 7) concludes that "Media effects within a concrete event such as the presidential campaign reveal the importance of media influence or of published polls during the campaign, which can contribute to the appearance of a spiral of silence to some candidates 'detriment'. At the same time, it proves again that the spiral of silence theory can lead to the explanation-understanding of the events in presidential election campaigns. In normal election campaigns, especially in presidential campaigns, the spiral of silence theory has a pronounced descriptive, explanatory and evaluative impact. Even though it might not seem like it, Donald Trump is a professional communicator; he controls the vocabulary, the mechanisms, the strategies, the stratagems of the journalistic language and the efficient working tools in the social media environment. Donald Trump is permanently on stage; he arouses, agitates and revives the numb minorities of all kinds, causes them to react, to express their opinion, removes them from silence; thus, the effects of inhibiting the expression of the views of electoral minorities are small. One theoretical consequence that emerges from these facts is that the spiral of silence theory did not have a significant explanatory impact in predicting and understanding what happened in the 2016 US election year. 265 Voters who elected Donald Trump in 2016 cannot be considered the silent minority. They are powerful people, aware of their own mandate that they have obtained by speaking. Those who have won by speaking a mandate that gives them the right to speak above and beyond in any case are not the silent minority. d) Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw studied the role of the media in the 1968 US presidential election (elections won by Richard Nixon). In relation to the ones reported, they hypothesized that the media plays a major role in delineating what the public considers important, that the public considers that an event is important in relation to the frequency and consistency with which it is covered by the media, even in relation to positioning the information on the printed page. They thus formulated an agenda-setting function of mass media: “In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality. (…) In reflecting on what candidates are saying during a campaign, the mass media may well determine the important issues — that is, the media may set the “agenda” of the campaign (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Agenda-setting is the most important of media effects theories. In connection with the agenda-setting are Framing theory and Priming theory. Moreover, there is a justified propensity for their unification within the perimeter of a single theoretical framework (Chernov & McCombs, 2019). As a sui generis journalist, aware of the power, mechanisms and tools of the media, Donald Trump has taken the initiative and proposes the agenda of public debate. In this way, he is one step ahead of the media in setting the public agenda. Through his frequent shocking, sensational public outings, he occupies the public space and the media space with the topics to be approached by Americans. Doland Trump applied and applies the Assyrian tactic of suffocation: the tactic that K. Kessler (1997, p. 129) talks about being used by the Assyrian kings 266 to maintain their long-term domination: “to challenge a huge and permanent stream of information ”. Donald Trump produces more information than the press can process, so they (the press) have more time to create the agenda. Donald Trump largely sets the agenda. Instead of evaluating, thinking and proposing what is to be discussed and what is to be done, the media deals with understanding, decoding, dismantling statements, and even developing Donald Trump. The media can't move so fast as to see Donald Trump from the front. The media is always following in the footsteps of Donald Trump, but in any case following him.With the Master Communicator on stage, the media has lost the power to propose the agenda. As such, the agenda setting theory is inapplicable during the 2016 election campaign. We would add that, more than that, the traditional media is completely in crisis (we will argue this later). e) The priming effect theory was used to decipher the mechanism of the 2009 presidential elections in Romania (Corbu & Boțan, 2013). In tandem with the agenda setting, it was used (without decisive clarification, in our opinion) and in reading the US 2016 Presidential election (Smith, 2017). ## **4. THE MASTER COMMUNICATOR** Wars are not events in which the question of honesty, correctness or truth is posed. Political battles are wars for votes. Those who request the vote must be good communicators and good social communication strategists. They must know the electorate and influence it to receive the vote. There are two ways of communicational influence: belief (based on rational arguments, natural logic or strict logic) and persuasion (this type of influence, which is based, in particular, on emotional arguments, not always impregnated by honesty, like seduction, lies, fiction or myth). The candidate for presidency must be a good communicator, because always the winning votes, the last, the most difficult to obtain are obtained through simple communication. No detailed rankings were made 267 regarding the communicative qualities of US presidents. However, the topic was addressed. For example, Dwight D. Eisenhower is "Strategic Communicator" (Medhurst, 1993), Ronald Reagan is "The Great Communicator" (Ritter & Henry, 1992), "The greatest communicator" (Wirthlin & Hall, 2004). In relation to his communication skills, his technological abilities and his journalistic expertise not in the very distant future, it will be found that Donald Trump is "The Master Communicator". The historical rule is that most presidents communicate with the population through mass media: "From the earliest days, presidents have used the news media to communicate with the public" (Frantzich, 2018, p.3). Most American presidents of the last 50 years are dissatisfied with the media. Stephen E. Frantzich makes a comparative summary of the dissatisfaction of several US presidents with the media: "lack of focus" (President Carter), media make "peppering" media (President Clinton), media - "a filter of reality" (President G) Bush), "breaking through the noise" (President Obama); "President Trump's epithets toward the media include calling them liars and 'enemies of the people'" (Frantzich, 2018, p.8). The most distant American president from the media seems to be President Trump. However, through his journalistic skills, his knowledge of media practice and his journalistic behavior, Donald Trump is the closest American president to the media soul. He is certainly loved and hated, despised and admired, but as in love, he is provoked and often challenged. In turn, the president knows that he has to increase the pot and raises. President Trump's generic relationship with the media is a loving mutual denial. (Of course we are not talking about all the media or any communication transactions or any interaction of the President with the media; there are cases and situations that do not fit with the generic relationship.) 268 ## **5. 2016, THE YEAR OF FAKE NEWS (THE BEGINNING OF A** ## **NEW WORLD); 2017: "YOU ARE FAKE NEWS"** Francis Fukuyama (2017) shows that "The Emergence of a Post-Fact World" took place in 2016 and implicitly characterizes fake news, specifying "One of the most striking developments of 2016 was the emergence of a 'postfact' ' world, in which virtually all authoritative information sources are challenged by contrary facts of dubious quality and provenance.In a world without gatekeepers, there is no reason to think that good information will win out over bad. ” The term fake news is not new. At the end of the 19th century, it was used naturally, with the same meaning it has today. Sidney Irving Pomerantz was a historian (university professor) concerned with the history of New York. To understand the workings of the great American metropolis, he incidentally investigated the influence of the press and business as significant factors in its development. In a 1958 study, entitled "The Press of a Greater New York, 1898-1900", he emphasized: "with the part the press played in the life of the Greater City as it shaped itself to the political formula of consolidation and met the challenge of a dynamic economy and the social and cultural complexities of a burgeoning metropolis ”(1958, p. 50). On the other hand, by examining the political inducements of the press, he emphasized (1958, p. 59): “The public is becoming heartily sick of fake news and fake extras. Some of the newspapers in this town have printed so many lying dispatches that people are beginning to mistrust any statement they make. ” H. Allcott and M. Gentzkow define "fake news to be news articles that are intentionally and verifiably false, and could mislead readers" (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017, p.213) . The background on which the emergence and massive proliferation of fake news takes place in the years after 2015 represent: 269 a) the slow and sometimes faulty movement of journalism in providing information; b) the emergence of new technologies that allow the transmission of information on channels that journalists no longer have guaranteed priority; c) “the erosion of long-standing institutional bulwarks against misinformation in the internet age” (Lazer et al., 2018, p. 1094). When he does not have an accredited source of information, the consumer of information uses non-accredited sources. Other times, he is left to the sources of uncredited sources by founded or unfounded disgust with the accredited journalism or through persuasion. Annually, the publication "PolitiFact" awards the "Lie of the Year" award. On December 21, 2015, Donald Trump was awarded the "2015 Lie of the Year: the campaign misstatements of Donald Trump" award. Angie Drobnic Holan, Linda Qiu pointed out in the award article that "It's the trope on Trump: He's authentic, a straight-talker, less scripted than traditional politicians. That's because Donald Trump doesn't let facts slow him down. Bending the truth or being unhappy by accuracy is a strategy he has followed for years ”(https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/dec/21/2015-lie-yeardonald- trump-campaign-misstatements /) On December 13, 2016, the publication announced the winner of the prize: "2016 Lie of the Year: Fake news". For this, Angie Drobnic Holan argued that "In 2016, the prevalence of political fact abuse - promulgated by the words of two polarizing presidential candidates and their passionate supporters - gave rise to a spread of fake news with unprecedented impunity." At the same time, she made an inventory, a podium of the most important fake news that occupied the information stage of the campaign of the two candidates, saying about them that "None of those stories (...) is remotely true". "Notable" fake news items mentioned are as follows: Fake news: Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a pizza shop. 270 Fake news: Democrats want to impose Islamic law in Florida. Fake news: Thousands of people at a Donald Trump rally in Manhattan chanted, 'We hate Muslims, we hate blacks, we want our great country back'. We note that the fake news reference term is "true" or "truth" and that other notable people do not have access to the podium: how the Pope would have declared his support for Donald Trump, Barack Obama was not born in the United States or how that Hillary Clinton was active in a network of pedophiles. From a positive perspective, President Donald Trump should have taken a prize of 2017: to have fixed forever in the vocabulary of the ordinary speaker the phrase "fake news", to have symbolically obliged the scientific community to deal with the significant joints of the concept of "fake news" and to stimulate political initiatives to give suggestions to the owners of digital platforms on which fake news can circulate to think about ways to inhibit and combat the phenomenon on these channels, by constantly using fake news himself. As Alina Bârgăoanu states, "the term has exploded in the planetary public space since 2016", with Donald Trump being the one who "inserted this term into the global political conversation" (Bârgăoanu, 2018, p.134). Media figure of an exceptional success, masterful communicator, Donald Trump will not remain in history only as the richest president of the United States, the owner of a wealth over the total assets of all his predecessors and the first to surpass the first president of the United States, George Washington, who is now the second (https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/02/12/the-net-worth-ofthe-american-presidents-washington-to-trump/2/ ). Donald Trump will also remain the one who has a critical contribution to opening the eyes of the world to the fake news phenomenon: he popularized the concept and ran its meanings.Donald Trump is the father of fake news in everyday life. Since 2016, the concept of fake news has entered the main stream of demolition qualifications. 271 ## **6. INSTEAD OF A CONCLUSION, THE RUIN OF JOURNALISM: THE YEAR OF HOAX (2004), THE YEAR OF "TWITTER BOMB" (2010), THE YEAR OF FAKE NEWS (2016)** The paradigm in which journalism worked in the last centuries thinks journalism, in the words of Marcel Broersma (2013, p. 41), as “a shared system of values that sets out how to gather, interpret and validate information, and as such structures and legitimizes the work of journalists ”. This emphasizes that "hoaxes reveal the structural weakness of the current journalistic paradigm" and that the journalist profession appears as "suffering from osteoporosis" (p. 41). The journalist was, and still is, believed to be the producer of all news.In the old paradigm, news is the work of a journalist, an accredited press operator and has certain qualities, certain specific determinants (Strömbäck, Karlsson & Hopmann, 2012).Fake news is a challenge for journalism. Journalism is agendasetting, journalism carries out large operations of two steps flow, journalism undertakes one step flow activities, journalism has a decisive role in the phenomena that are the object of spiral of silence. Journalism seemed to be everywhere. At one point, journalism was no longer the main provider of information for a short period. Then the journalists felt that their ground was leaking under their feet. They noted that the Internet (especially Facebook, Twitter) is considered a more important information provider than big journalism itself. Then journalism revolted. It was an important moment in US history, in world history, in the history of journalism and in the history of descriptiveexplanatory (-normative-prescriptive) sociological theories. The crisis, awareness of the crisis and initialization-accreditation-definitive installation of the crisis occurred between September 2016-January 2017, but it is still ongoing. The headline of the crisis is, with an expression of the US president addressed to a journalist (the name and media agency are not relevant) and dedicated to both him and his media company : "You are fake news"; it was on the first press 272 conference since President-elect Donald Trump's Election Day on January 11, 2017 https://www.facebook.com/FOX10Phoenix/videos/trump-to-reporter-youare-fake-news/1236747433040468/ . The recent history of losing control of information is marked by the hoax (2004), the "Twitter bomb" (2010) and the fake news explosion (2016). In 2004 there was a press scandal that Marcel Broersma (2013, p. 28) presents as follows: “The day after CBS's 60 Minutes and the New Yorker published their fi rst stories and now iconic pictures on the Abu Ghraib scandal, the Daily Mirror shouted on its front page 'Vile ... but this time it's a BRITISH soldier degrading an Iraqi'. A full-page picture showed a soldier urinating on a tied up, halfnaked and hooded prisoner. The next pages contained more 'shocking photographs', a detailed story about the abuse and an outraged leading article (Daily Mirror (DM), 1-5-2004). However, while in the coming days, weeks and months the Abu Ghraib story developed into a national and international scandal, the Mirror's 'exclusive world' turned out to be untrue. After two weeks, in which the paper faced signi fi cant pressure, it had to admit it was betrayed. It published a shameful front page apologizing in big bold capitals 'Sorry ... we were hoaxed' (DM, 15-5-2004) ”. E. Mustafaraj and PT Metaxas (2010) investigated the dissemination, the spread coordinated through anonymous Twitter accounts of false information about Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate for senator. They also documented the dissemination procedure: infiltration into the network of users and then the release of false information. They then reinforced the concept of "Twitter bomb", understanding it as an "act of sending unsolicited replies to specific users via Twitter in order to get them to pay attention to one's cause" (Metaxas & Mustafaraj, 2012). By hampering and implicitly devaluing general journalism, a huge volume of fake news ran throughout 2016 in connection with the November 5, 2016 election. Was Fake News a phenomenon that had an impact on Americans' electoral thinking? Most likely. This phenomenon remains confusing, it remains 273 uncertain, it remains rationally inexplicable, because at a rapid entrainment of the great sociological theories that usually have an incidence in such events, it is found that no one has clear explanations. ## **7. FOR FURTHER RESEARCH** At present, by definition, fake news is volatile. We intend to investigate in the future whether or not fake news constitutes communication constructions that have as their core a factoid and / or a factlet, information configured around a factoid. The American writer Norman Mailer, in a book that constitutes a biography of actress Marilyn Monroe, invented the word factoid in 1973; he pointed out that in previous biographies of that respective fact and factoids were mixed: "fewer facts than factoids ... that is, facts that have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority ”. In the Oxford Dictionaries definition, factoid is "an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact", and in that of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary it would be "an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print". According to Randon House College Dictionary "a lie or half-truth, devised especially to gain publicity and accepted as a fact because of constant re petition in print, conversation" (Apud Safire, 1999, p.159). The factoid would be unreal, untrue information, misinformation that passes as information; it would be a fictional construction that is promoted as a fact, which after multiple repetition is accepted as a fact, which passes as a fact. The factlet is a trivial, minor, insignificant fact in human order that a petty interest unfairly charges major practical meanings in the real order. And fake news uses both to spread its' message. 274 ## **REFERENCES** *** A multi-dimensional approach to disinformation. Report of the independent High level Group on fake news and online disinformation” (2018) (https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/final-report-high-levelexpert-group-fake-news-and-online-disinformation) *** Public Paper, State Printers, 1944. Agosto, D. E. (Ed.) 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