Discursive strategies for managing coronavirus fake news (rumors) by analyzing some pages in Telegram

Document Type : Research

Author

Assistant professor, Department of Language and Literature, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies (IHCS);

Abstract

During the last months, side by side of COVID-19, fake news has been spread along with the outbreak of the virus, depending on its importance and fear and its effects on various fields. Rumors or fake news are social phenomena and are often condemned, especially by those who fall victim to it. All human beings are often, each in a way, sometimes not obvious, at home, at work, while sitting in a public vehicle, in times of economic and social crisis, etc., exposed to fake news, hearing rumors, gossips, and so on. The initial perception of the word is that a piece of "news" whose validity and accuracy cannot be easily verified is published and is often associated with irresponsibility and immorality. What has created the context for the globalization of production and the spread of rumors is media technology and cyberspace. Rumors, like fraud and forgery, manipulate the system of fact-finding and cause the material content of truth to be replaced by the material of false content in the semantic process. The main function of the rumor in this text is to discredit and disregard the truth (replacing a lie with a valid word). Rumors and false news are phenomena that have always been produced in societies, but these phenomena are more pronounced at times when horrific events occur. With the occurrence of COVID-19 in the world since late 2019, rumors have also intensified. Some people consider the destructive effect of rumors on the escalation of the crisis to be even more important and effective than the Corona. Countries like China immediately devised a planning system to manage the news of the corona, thus limiting the spread of conflicting news and scattered statistics, yet some other countries not only did not seem to take measures to address the information crisis, their own institutions have become a source of fake news and rumors. Rumors can be studied from different perspectives, but in this research, rumors and false news are related to Corona in terms of their linguistic nature and are observed in the context of discursive systems.

Keywords

References

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ZABANPAZHUHI (Journal of Language Research)
Volume 14, Issue 44 - Serial Number 44
September 2022
Pages 35-58

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