Educação midiática na era da (des)informação: o gênero do discurso fake news

Abstract

The expression “fake news” gained notoriety and popularity in the end of 2016, due to two political events of world repercussion: the US presidential elections that culminated in the victory of Donald Trump and the process through which the United Kingdom left the European Union, known as Brexit. The possibility of interference of fake news on the result of both referenda sparked debate and controversy within the sphere of public opinion. After such facts, the term fake news has become common, and has been used to refer to a series of texts that circulate the internet, showing deceitful or false content. Considering such panorama, the present dissertation focusses on fake news as a new genre of the discourse that has been consolidated in contemporaneity, connected to the present sociopolitical backdrop and to the advent of social media. Works written on the phenomenon of fake news such as Wardle (2017), Santaella (2018) and Anstead (2021) have been referred to. Besides, we have used the theory of the genres of the discourse developed by the circle of Mikhail Bakhtin (2009 e 2011). Acknowledging the deep social impact caused by the dissemination of false content, the research turns especially to Media Education as a tool to combat fake news, aiming at showing possibilities to approach it as a discursive genre in Portuguese Language lessons