Why is it that nowadays it’s more difficult than ever to identify truth from fiction, if our knowledge about who we are is much greater than it’s ever been? Does being more informed today mean being better informed?
UnfakingNews presents itself with the aim of explaining, exploring and contextualizing this new phenomenon in which along with the semantic umbrella that has been constructed in recent years around the concept of fake news, other similar curiousities have started to appear in the form of misinformation, post-truth, alternative facts, echo chambers, filter bubbles, clickbait and content farms.
To understand how we arrived at the current situation, we must analyze the relationship between the media and technology companies akin to that of a technolocal village, in which large corporations have become agents of power at the local level and mirrors of reality on a global level. As a consequence of this artificial symbiosis, we can see this effect reflected on the relationship between voters and consumers of information, the role of segmented advertising and big data; as well as the consequences that this Big Brother of Marketing has on the progress and improvement of the democratic quality of our societies.
It has become impossible to try to set this this scenario apart from the two great political agents who create, distribute and collide around information wars of the 21st century, the USA. and Russia. However, beyond its political component, disinformation has a clear economic objective. With such intentions, Unfakingnews aims to confront these so-called content farms and describe the consequences that both their existence and their success have on our informative environment.
Raúl Magallón
Professor of Journalism and Audiovisual Communication at the Universidad Carlos III of Madrid