Cover not available
Article published In:
Discourses of Fake News
Edited by Scott Wright
[Journal of Language and Politics 20:5] 2021
► pp. 761–782

Audience constructions of fake news in Australian media representations of asylum seekers

A critical discourse perspective

ORCID logo | The University of Melbourne
In recent years, the term ‘fake news’ has gained considerable traction in scholarly and public discourse. While fake news is increasingly attributed to declining audience trust, we know little about how publics are making sense of the concept. To address this, I discuss findings arising from interviews with 24 Western Australian media consumers who offered their perspectives on Australian news coverage of asylum seekers. Combining Critical Discourse methods with Rhetorical Analysis, findings highlight how participants evaluated misinformation and disinformation about asylum seekers and in particular, how some adopted a discourse of ‘fake news’ to delegitimise perspectives that oppose their own stance. Discussed alongside Egelhofer and Lecheler’s (2019) theoretical framework of the fake news ‘label’, I argue that by understanding how audiences discussed fake news before the concept rose to prominence in 2016, scholars can meaningfully examine discursive patterns within social constructions of fake news across numerous contemporary and historical contexts.
Keywords: fake news, media, audiences, critical discourse analysis, Australia, asylum seekers
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Trust and mistrust in the era of ‘fake news’
  • 3.Conceptualising ‘fake news’
  • 4.The ‘fake news’ audience
  • 5.Research design
    • 5.1Participants, sampling and data collection
    • 5.2Analysis
    • 5.3Theoretical framework: The fake news ‘genre’ versus fake news ‘label’
  • 6.Findings and discussion
    • 6.1News engagement and trust
    • 6.2‘Force-fed garbage’: Discussions of fake news as a genre
    • 6.3‘Leftist propaganda’: Deploying the fake news label
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Declaration of interest statement
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 16 July 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.21028.haw
References (57)
References
Alcorn, Niki, and Lucy Buchanan. 2017. Media consumer survey 2017: Australian media and digital preferences, 6th edition. Sydney: Deloitte.Google Scholar
Allcott, Hunt, and Matthew Gentzkow. 2017. “Social media and fake news in the 2016 election”. Journal of Economic Perspectives 31(2): 211–236. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bakir, Vian, and Andrew McStay. 2017. “Fake news and the economy of emotions: problems, causes, solutions”. Digital Journalism 6(2): 154–175. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baym, Geoffrey. 2005. “The Daily Show: Discursive integration and the reinvention of political journalism”. Political Communication 22(3): 259–276. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Billig, Michael. 1987. Arguing and thinking: A rhetorical approach to social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 1991. Ideology and opinions: Studies in rhetorical psychology. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Brummette, John, Marcia DiStaso, Michail Vafeiadis and Marcus Messner. 2018. “Read all about it: The politicization of “fake news” on Twitter.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 95(2), 497–517. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carlson, Matt. 2017. Journalistic authority: Legitimating news in the digital era. New York City: Columbia University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cooke, Nicole. A. 2017. “Posttruth, truthiness, and alternative facts: Information behavior and critical information consumption for a new age”. The Library Quarterly 87(3): 211–221. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dentith, Matthew R. X. 2017. “The problem of fake news”. Public Reason 8(1–2): 65–79.Google Scholar
Egelhofer, Jana Laura, and Sophie Lecheler. 2019. “Fake news as a two-dimensional phenomenon: A framework and research agenda”. Annals of the International Communication Association 43(2): 97–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Katherine, Janet Fulton and Paul Scott. 2016. “Detention attention: framing a Manus Island riot”. Pacific Journalism Review: Te Koakoa 22(1): 74–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Every, Danielle. 2013. “‘Shame on you’: The language, practice and consequences of shame and shaming in asylum seeker advocacy”. Discourse and Society 24(6): 667–686. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Farhall, Kate, Andrea Carson, Scott Wright, Andrew Gibbons, and William Lukamto. 2019. “Political elites’ use of fake news discourse across communications platforms”. International Journal of Communication 13(23): 4353–4375.Google Scholar
Fisher, Caroline, Sora Park, Jee Young Lee, Glen Fuller and Yoonmo Sang. 2019. Digital news report: Australia 2019. Canberra: University of Canberra.Google Scholar
Flood, Alison. 2017. “Fake news is ‘very real’ word of the year for 2017”. The Guardian (2 November). Retrieved 6 September 2020, from: [URL]
Fozdar, Farida, and Anne Pedersen. 2013. “Diablogging about asylum seekers: Building a counter-hegemonic discourse”. Discourse and Communication 7(4): 371–388. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gelfert, Axel. 2018. “Fake news: A definition”. Informal Logic 38(1): 84–117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gil de Zúñiga, Homero, and Trevor Diehl. 2018. “News finds me perception and democracy: Effects on political knowledge, political interest, and voting”. New Media and Society 211: 1253–1271. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hanitzsch, Thomas, Arjen Van Dalen, and Nina Steindl. 2018. “Caught in the nexus: A comparative and longitudinal analysis of public trust in the press.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 23(1): 3–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haw, Ashleigh L. 2018. ‘I take it with a pinch of salt’: Discursive responses to news representations of asylum seekers among Western Australian media audiences (Doctoral Dissertation). Crawley, WA: The University of Western Australia.Google Scholar
Higgins, Claire. 2017. Asylum by boat: Origins of Australia’s refugee policy. Sydney: UNSW Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Thomas J., and Kaye, Barbara K. 2000. “Using is believing: The influence of reliance on the credibility of online political information among politically interested internet users”. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 771: 865–879. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Juhász, Attila, and Patrik. 2017. The political effects of migration-related fake news, disinformation and conspiracy theories in Europe. Budapest: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Political Capital Policy Research and Consulting Institute.Google Scholar
Lokot, Tetyana, and Nicholas Diakopoulos. 2016. “News bots: Automating news and information dissemination on Twitter”. Digital Journalism 4(6): 682–699. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lueck, Kerstin, Clemence Due and Martha Augoustinos. 2015. Neoliberalism and nationalism: Representations of asylum seekers in the Australian mainstream news media. Discourse and Society 26(5): 608–629. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mares, Peter. 2002. Borderline: Australia’s response to refugees and asylum seekers in the wake of the Tampa. Sydney: UNSW Press.Google Scholar
McBride, Kelly, and Tom Rosenstiel (eds). 2013. The new ethics of journalism: Principles for the 21st century. Washington, D.C: CQ Press.Google Scholar
McCollough, Kathleen, Jessica K. Crowell, and Philip M. Napoli. 2017. “Portrait of the online local news audience”. Digital Journalism 5(1): 100–118. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNair, Brian. 2018. Fake news: Falsehood, fabrication and fantasy in journalism. Oxon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Muller, Denis. 2016. Islamisation’ and other anxieties: Voter attitudes to asylum seekers. Melbourne: The University of Melbourne.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis, and Lucas Graves. 2017. ‘News you don’t believe’: Audience perspectives on fake news. Oxford, UK: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.Google Scholar
Nelson, Jacob L., and Harsh Taneja. 2018. “The small, disloyal fake news audience: The role of audience availability in fake news consumption”. New Media and Society 20(10): 3720–3737. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newman, Nic, and Richard Fletcher. 2017. Bias, bullshit and lies: Audience perspectives on low trust in the media. Oxford, UK: Reuters Institute.Google Scholar
Noy, Chaim. 2008. “Sampling knowledge: The hermeneutics of snowball sampling in qualitative research”. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 11(4): 327–344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Park, Sora, Caroline Fisher, Jee Young Lee, Kieran McGuinness, Yoonmo Sang, Mathieu O’Neil, Michael Jensen, Kerry McCallum and Glen Fuller. 2020. Digital news report: Australia 2020. Canberra: News and Media Research Centre, University of Canberra.Google Scholar
Philo, Greg, Emma Briant, and Pauline Donald. 2013. Bad News for Refugees. Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Pickering, Sharon. 2001. “Common sense and original deviancy: News discourses and asylum seekers in Australia”. Journal of Refugee Studies 14(2): 169–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Potter, Jonathan. W., and Margaret Wetherell. 1987. Discourse and social psychology. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Slattery, Kate. 2003. “Drowning not waving: The ‘children overboard’ event and Australia’s fear of the other”. Media International Australia 109(1): 93–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Slavíčková, Tess, and Peter Zvagulis. 2014. “Monitoring anti-minority rhetoric in Czech print media: A critical discourse analysis.” Journal of Language and Politics 13(1): 152–170. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sutherland, Andrew. D., and Tiffany. A. Dykstra-DeVette. 2018. “Constructing identification and division through fake news reports of refugees”. Language Discourse and Society 6(1): 15–31.Google Scholar
Tandoc, Edson. C., Zheng Wei Lim and Richard Ling. 2018. “Defining ‘fake news’: A typology of scholarly definitions”. Digital Journalism 6(2): 137–153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Titscher, Stefan, Michael Meyer, Ruth Wodak and Eva Vetter. 2000. Methods of text and discourse analysis. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Tsfati, Yariv. 2003. “Does audience skepticism of the media matters in agenda setting?” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 47(2): 157–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. Uses and perceptions of political media. In Reinemann, Carsten (ed). Political communication, 489–506. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tsfati, Yariv, and Cappella, Joseph N. 2003. “Do people watch what they do not trust? Exploring the association between news media skepticism and exposure”. Communication Research 30(5): 504–529. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, Teun. A. 2000. “New(s) racism: A discourse analytical approach”. Ethnic Minorities and the Media 371: 33–49.Google Scholar
Van Duyn, Emily, and Jessica Collier. 2019. “Priming and fake news: The effects of elite discourse on evaluations of news media”. Mass Communication and Society 22(1): 29–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wardle, Claire. 2017. “Fake news. It’s complicated”. Retrieved 9 September 2020, from: [URL]
Wardle, Claire, and Hossein Derakhshan. 2017. “Information disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policymaking”. The Council of Europe. Retrieved 9 September 2020, from: [URL]
Willig, Carla. 2008. Introducing qualitative research in psychology: Adventures in theory and method. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Michał Krzyżanowski. 2017. “Right-wing populism in Europe and USA: Contesting politics and discourse beyond ‘Orbanism’ and ‘Trumpism’”. Journal of Language and Politics 16(4): 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Young, Sally. 2011. How Australia decides: Election reporting and the media. Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zaryan, Stella. 2017. Truth and trust: How audiences are making sense of fake news. Lund: Lund University.Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Cover, Rob, Ashleigh Haw & Jay Daniel Thompson
2023. Remedying disinformation and fake news? The cultural frameworks of fake news crisis responses and solution-seeking. International Journal of Cultural Studies 26:2 ► pp. 216 ff. DOI logo
Cover, Rob, Jay Daniel Thompson & Ashleigh Haw
2022. The Spectre of Populist Leadership: QAnon, Emergent Formations, and Digital Community. Media and Communication 10:4 ► pp. 118 ff. DOI logo
Gibbons, Andrew & Andrea Carson
2022. What is misinformation and disinformation? Understanding multi-stakeholders’ perspectives in the Asia Pacific. Australian Journal of Political Science 57:3 ► pp. 231 ff. DOI logo
Wright, Scott
2021. Discourses of fake news. Journal of Language and Politics 20:5 ► pp. 641 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. References. In Fake News in Digital Cultures: Technology, Populism and Digital Misinformation, ► pp. 153 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.