Disintermediation and disinformation as a political strategyuse of AI to analyse fake news as Trump’s rhetorical resource on Twitter

  1. Diez-Gracia, Alba 1
  2. Sánchez-García, Pilar 1
  3. Martín-Román, Javier 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Valladolid
    info

    Universidad de Valladolid

    Valladolid, España

    ROR https://ror.org/01fvbaw18

Revista:
El profesional de la información

ISSN: 1386-6710 1699-2407

Año de publicación: 2023

Título del ejemplar: Disinformation and online media

Volumen: 32

Número: 5

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.3145/EPI.2023.SEP.23 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openAcceso abierto editor

Otras publicaciones en: El profesional de la información

Resumen

Los efectos comunicativos de la desintermediación informativa provocados por las redes sociales fomentan la expansión de discursos políticos personalistas y emocionales que calan directamente en la audiencia y evaden el filtro periodístico tradicional. Este fenómeno deriva en nuevas tácticas de comunicación política, pero también expone a los ciudadanos a contenido potencialmente fraudulento, contaminado o polarizado. En este contexto, enmarcado en la post-verdad, el término fake news gana relevancia como una forma de referirse a la desinformación y como un argumento político y performativo que puede instrumentalizarse. Esta investigación tiene por objetivo analizar dicho uso en el discurso del expresidente Donald Trump durante su etapa presidencial (2017-2021), poniendo el foco en Twitter como plataforma principal en su estrategia de comunicación política digital. Para analizarlo, se recurre a una triangulación metodológica de análisis de contenido, del discurso y del sentimiento –este último, combinando Lexicon y técnicas de inteligencia artificial (IA) mediante machine learning basadas en deep learning y procesamiento del lenguaje natural–, que se aplica a sus mensajes publicados con el término fake news (N=768). El análisis de la muestra, que se ofrece aquí en un dataset abierto, emplea un software de elaboración propia que permite filtrar y codificar cada unidad de análisis en torno a sus temáticas, sentimientos y palabras predominantes. Los resultados principales confirman que la atribución de ‘fake news’ que hace Trump se centra en tres temas principales: medios (53%), políticas (40%) y su gabinete de gobierno (33%). Asimismo, se constata cómo el expresidente recurre a una agenda personalista, enfocada en la defensa de sus propuestas y su equipo (80%) mediante la deslegitimación de sus oponentes y de la prensa, con un tono negativo (72%) cargado de expresiones despectivas, confirmando una estrategia instrumentalista del término fake news como argumento político de desinformación y desintermediación.

Referencias bibliográficas

  • Albright, Jonathan (2017). “Welcome to the Era of Fake News”. Media and communication, v. 5, n. 2, pp. 87-89. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v5i2.977
  • Barbu, Oana (2014). “Advertising, microtargeting and social media”. Procedia-social and behavioral sciences, v. 163, pp. 44-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.12.284
  • Beer, David; Burrows, Roger (2007). “Sociology and, of and in web 2.0: some initial considerations”. Sociological research online, v. 12, n. 5. https://doi.org/10.5153/sro.1560
  • Berrocal-Gonzalo, Salomé; Campos-Domínguez, Eva; Redondo-García, Marta (2014). “Media prosumers in political communication: politainment on YouTube”. Comunicar, v. 43, n. XXII, pp. 65-72. https://doi.org/10.3916/C43-2014-06
  • Berrocal-Gonzalo, Salomé; Quevedo, Raquel; García-Beaudoux, Virginia (2022). “Pop online politics: new strategies and leaderships for new audiences”. Index comunicación, v. 12, n. 1, pp. 13-19. http://hdl.handle.net/10115/18489
  • Bleakley, Paul (2018). “Situationism and the recuperation of an ideology in the era of Trump, fake news and post-truth politics”. Capital & class, v. 42, n. 3, pp. 419-434. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816818759231
  • Borgesius, Frederik-Zuiderveen; Möller, Judith; Kruikemeier, Sanne; Fathaigh, Ronan Ó.; Irion, Kristina; Dobber, Tom; Bodó, Balázs; De-Vreese, Claes H. (2018). “Online political microtargeting: Promises and threats for democracy”. Utrecht law review, v. 14, n. 1, pp. 82-96. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3128787
  • Boshmaf, Yazan; Muskukhov, Ildar; Beznosov, Konstantin; Ripeanu, Matei (2011). “The socialbot network: when bots socialize for fame and money”. Twenty-seventh annual computer security applications conference [conference session], December 5th-9th. Orlando, USA. https://bit.ly/3YV2nGQ
  • Bradshaw, Samantha; Howard, Philip; Kollanyi, Bence; Neudert, Lisa-Maria (2020). “Sourcing and automation of political news and information over social media in the United States, 2016-2018”. Political communication, v. 37, n. 2, pp. 173-193. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2019.1663322
  • Cabezuelo-Lorenzo, Francisco; Manfredi, Juan-Luis (2019). “Post-truth, fake-news and political agenda in Trump’s speech on Twitter”. Historia y comunicación social, v. 24, n. 2, pp. 471. https://doi.org/10.5209/hics.66291
  • Cano-Orón, Lorena; Calvo, Dafne; Llorca-Abad, Germán; Mestre-Pérez, Rosanna (2021b). “Media crisis and disinformation: the participation of digital newspapers in the dissemination of a denialist hoax”. Profesional de la información, v. 30, n. 4. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2021.jul.12
  • Cano-Orón, Lorena; Calvo, Dafne; López-García, Guillermo; Baviera, Tomás (2021a). “Disinformation in Facebook ads in the 2019 Spanish general election campaigns”. Media & communication, v. 9, n. 1, pp. 217-228. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v9i1.3335
  • Carlson, Matt (2018). “Automating judgment? Algorithmic judgment, news knowledge, and journalistic professionalism”. New media & society, v. 20, n. 5, pp. 1755-1772. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817706684
  • Carmi, Elinor; Yates, Simeon J.; Lockley, Eleanor; Pawluczuk, Alicja (2020). “Data citizenship: rethinking data literacy in the age of disinformation, misinformation and malinformation”. Internet policy review, v. 9, n. 1. https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/218938
  • Castells, Manuel (2009). Comunicación y poder. Alianza Editorial. ISBN: 978 84 2068499 4
  • Chandra, Rohitash; Saini, Ritij (2021). “Biden vs Trump: modelling US general elections using BERT language model”. IEEE access, v. 9. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3111035
  • Cheng, Eviane (2019). “Immigrant, nationalist and proud: A Twitter analysis of Indian diaspora supporters for Brexit and Trump”. Media and communication, v. 7, n. 1. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v7i1.1629
  • Cinelli, Matteo; De-Francisci-Morales, Gianmarco; Galeazzi, Alessandro; Quattrociocchi, Walter; Starnini, Michele (2021). “The echo chamber effect on social media”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, v. 118, n. 9. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023301118
  • Coleman, Stephen (2005). “New mediation and direct representation: reconceptualising representation in the digital age”. New media & society, v. 7, n. 2, pp. 177-198. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444805050745
  • Colonescu, Constantin (2018). “The effects of Donald Trump’s tweets on US financial and foreign exchange markets”. Athens journal of business & economics, v. 4, n. 4, pp. 375-388. https://doi.org/10.30958/ajbe.4-4-2
  • Courty, Audrey (2021). “Despite being permanently banned, Trump’s prolific Twitter record lives on”. The conversation, 13th January. https://theconversation.com/despite-being-permanently-banned-trumps-prolific-twitter-record-lives-on-152969
  • Dang, Nhan-Cach; Moreno-García, María; De-La-Prieta, Fernando (2020). “Sentiment analysis based on deep learning. A comparative study”. Electronics, v. 9, n. 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9030483
  • Das-Sarma, Matthew (2016). “Tweeting 2016: how social media is shaping the presidential election”. Inquiries, v. 8, n. 9. http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1454/tweeting-2016-how-social-media-is-shaping-the-presidential-election
  • Dwianto, Rahmad-Agus; Nurmandi, Achmad; Salahudin, Salahudin (2021). “The sentiments analysis of Donald Trump and Jokowi’s twitters on covid-19 policy dissemination”. Webology, v. 18, n. 1, pp. 389-405. https://doi.org/10.14704/WEB/V18I1/WEB18096
  • Enguix-Oliver, Salvador (2020). “Efectos de la digitalización en la relación entre periodistas y políticos: desintermediación y pactos comunicativos”. Pasajes, v. 59, pp. 19-30. https://roderic.uv.es/bitstream/handle/10550/76566/7550103.pdf
  • Ermakova, Tatiana; Henke, Max; Fabian, Benjamin (2021). “Commercial sentiment analysis solutions: a comparative study”. Webist 2021, pp. 103-114. https://doi.org/10.5220/0010709400003058
  • Farkas, Johan; Schou, Jannick (2020). Post-truth, fake news and democracy: mapping the politics of falsehood. Routledge. ISBN: 978 0 36732217 5
  • Fernández-Castrillo, Carolina (2014). “Prácticas transmedia en la era del prosumidor: hacia una definición del contenido generado por el usuario (CGU)”. Cuadernos de información y comunicación, n. 19, pp. 53-67. https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_CIYC.2014.v19.43903
  • Fincham, Kelly (2019). “Exploring political journalism homophily on Twitter: a comparative analysis of US and UK elections in 2016 and 2017”. Media and communication, v. 7, n. 1, pp. 213-224. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v7i1.1765
  • Froehlich, Thomas J. (2020). “A disinformation-misinformation ecology: the case of Trump”. In: Visnovský, Ján; Radosinká, Jana (eds.). Fake news is bad news. Hoaxes, half-truths and the nature of today´s journalism (pp. 13-58). IntechOpen. ISBN: 978 1 83962 423
  • García-Orosa, Berta (2021). “Disinformation, social media, bots, and astroturfing: the fourth wave of digital democracy”. Profesional de la información, v. 30, n. 6. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2021.nov.03
  • Gillespie, Tarleton (2010). “The politics of ‘platforms’”. New media & society, v. 12, n. 3, pp. 347-364. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809342738
  • Gómez-García, Salvador; Gil-Torres, Alicia; Carrillo-Vera, José-Agustín; Navarro-Sierra, Nuria (2019). “Constructing Donald Trump: mobile apps in the political discourse about the president of the United States”. Comunicar, v. 27, n. 59. https://doi.org/10.3916/C59-2019-05
  • Grossman, Lawrence (1995). The electronic republic: reshaping democracy in the information age. Viking. ISBN: 978 0 670 86129 3
  • Happer, Catherine; Hoskins, Andrew; Merrin, William (2018). “Weaponizing reality: an introduction to Trump’s waron the media”. In: Hoskins, Andrew; Merrin, William (eds.). Trump’s media war (pp. 3-22). Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN: 978 3 319 94069 4
  • Hernández-Serrano, María-José; Renés-Arellano, Paula; Graham, Gary; Greenhill, Anita (2017). “From prosumer to prodesigner: participatory news consumption”. Comunicar, v. 25, n. 50, pp. 77-88. https://doi.org/10.3916/C50-2017-07
  • Journell, Wayne (2017). “Fake news, alternative facts, and Trump: Teaching social studies in a post-truth era”. Social studies journal, v. 37, n. 1, pp. 8-21. https://pcssonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-Spring-PCSS-Journal.pdf
  • Kapantai, Eleni; Christopoulou, Androniki; Berberidis, Christos; Peristeras, Vassilios (2020). “A systematic literature review on disinformation: toward a unified taxonomical framework”. New media & society, v. 23, n. 5, pp. 1301-1326. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820959296
  • Kaur, Manpreet; Verma, Rajesh; Otoo, Frank-Nana-Kweku (2021). “Emotions in leader’s crisis communication: Twitter sentiment analysis during Covid-19 outbreak”. Journal of human behaviour in the social environment, v. 31, n. 1-4, pp. 362-372. https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2020.1829239
  • Kotras, Baptiste (2020). “Mass personalization: Predictive marketing algorithms and the reshaping of consumer knowledge”. Big data & society, v. 7, n. 2. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951720951581
  • Krippendorf, Klaus (2004). Content analysis: an introduction to its methodology. SAGE.
  • Lokot, Tetyana; Diakopoulos, Nicholas (2015). “News bots”. Digital journalism, v. 4, n. 6, pp. 682-699. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2015.1081822
  • López-Jiménez, Gloria (2014). “El proceso de desintermediación comunicativa”. Revista internacional del mundo económico y del derecho, v. VII, pp. 69-91. https://bit.ly/2I2Rhuy
  • Machus, Tobias; Mestel, Roland; Theissen, Erik (2022). “Heroes, just for one day: the impact of Donald Trump’s tweets on stock prices”. Journal of behavioral and experimental finance, v. 33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbef.2021.100594
  • Magallón-Rosa, Raúl (2018). “La biblioteca digital sobre Donald Trump. Fact-checking frente a fake news”. Estudios sobre el mensaje periodístico, v. 24, n. 1, pp. 273-282. https://doi.org/10.5209/ESMP.59949
  • Meeks, Lindsey (2019). “Defining the enemy: how Donald Trump frames the news media”. Journalism & mass communication quarterly, v. 97, n. 1, pp. 211-234. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699019857676
  • Meirick, Patrick C.; Franklyn, Amanda E. (2022). “Seeing and believing pro-Trump fake news: the interacting roles of online news sources, partisanship, and education”. International journal of communication, v. 16, pp. 3379-3401. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/18579
  • Mencarelli, Alberto (2021). “Parliaments facing the virtual challenge: a conceptual approach for new models of representation”. Parliamentary affairs, n. October. https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsab052
  • Milan, Stefania (2015). “When algorithms shape collective action: Social media and the dynamics of cloud protesting”. Socialmedia+society, v. 1, n. 2. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115622481
  • Misiejuk, Kamila; Scianna, Jennifer; Kaliisa, Rogers; Vachuska, Karl; Williamson-Schaffer, David (2021). “Incorporating sentiment analysis with epistemic network analysis to enhance discourse analysis of twitter data”. In: Ruis, A. R.; Lee, S. B. (eds.). Advances in quantitative ethnography (pp. 375-389). Springer. ISBN: 978 3 0303323 10
  • Morris, Dick (2001). “Direct democracy and the internet”. Loyola of Los Angeles law review, v. 34, n. 3, pp. 1033-1053. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=httpsredir=1&article=2280&;context=llr
  • Murthy, Dhiraj; Powell, Alison B.; Tinati, Rramine; Anstead, Nick; Carr, Leslie; Halford, Susan J.; Weal, Mark (2016). “Automation, algorithms, and politics. Bots and political influence: A sociotechnical investigation of social network capital”. IJOC, n. 10, v. 2016, pp. 4952-4971. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/6271
  • Muswede, Thabiso (2022). “Impact of digital media on political campaigns. Towards disintermediated political communication in Africa”. African journal of political science, v. 10, n. 1, pp. 41-50. https://doi.org/10.36615/ajpsrasp.v10i1.1152
  • Papakyriakopoulos, Orestis; Hegelich, Simon; Shahrezaye, Morteza; Medina-Serrano, Juan-Carlos (2018). “Social media and microtargeting: Political data processing and the consequences for Germany”. Big data & society, v. 5, n. 2. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951718811844
  • Pariser, Eli (2011). The filter bubble: what the Internet is hiding from you. Penguin. ISBN: 978 1 59420300 8
  • Pérez-Salazar, Gabriel (2011). “La web 2.0 y la sociedad de la información”. Revista mexicana de ciencias políticas y sociales, v. 56, n. 212, pp. 57-68. https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0185-19182011000200004
  • Pfister, Damien-Smith (2011). “Networked expertise in the era of many-to-many communication: on Wikipedia and invention”. Social epistemology, v. 25, n. 3, pp. 217-231. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2011.578306
  • Piñuel-Raigada, José-Luis (2002). “Epistemología, metodología y técnicas del análisis de contenido”. Estudios de sociolingüística, v. 3, 42 pp. https://cutt.ly/4wbptUNp
  • Quealy, Kevin (2021). “The complete list of Trump’s Twitter insults (2015-2021)”. The New York Times, 19th January. https://nyti.ms/3Y3XDgR
  • Raynauld, Vincent; Turcotte, André (2018). “Different strokes for different folks: implications of voter micro-targeting and appeal in the age of Donald Trump”. In: Gillies, J. (ed.). Political marketing in the 2016 US presidential election (pp. 11-28). Springer. ISBN: 978 3 31 959345 6
  • Ribeiro, Felipe N.; Saha, Koustuv; Babaei, Mahmoudreza; Henrique, Lucas; Messias, Johnnatan; Benevenuto, Fabricio; Gaga, Oana; Gummadi, Krishna P.; Redmiles, Elissa M. (2019). “On microtargeting socially divisive ads: A case study of Russia-linked ad campaigns on Facebook”. Proceedings of FAT*’19, pp. 140-149. https://doi.org/10.1145/3287560.3287580
  • Ritzer, George (2015). “Automating prosumption: The decline of the prosumer and the rise of the prosuming machines”. Journal of consumer culture, v. 15, n. 3, pp. 407-424. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540514553717
  • Ritzer, George; Dean, Paul; Jurgenson, Nathan (2012). “The coming of age of the prosumer”. American behavioural scientist, v. 56, n. 4, pp. 379-398. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764211429368
  • Ross, Andrew S.; Rivers, Damian J. (2018). “Discursive deflection: Accusation of ‘fake news’ and the spread of mis-and disinformation in the tweets of President Trump”. Social media+society, v. 4, n. 2. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118776010
  • Rossetti, Michael; Zaman, Tauhid (2023). “Bots, disinformation, and the first impeachment of U.S. President Donald Trump”. Plos one, v. 18, n. 5. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283971
  • Rossini, Patricia; Stromer-Gallery, Jennifer; Korsunska, Ania (2021). “More than ‘fake news’? The media as malicious gatekeeper and a bully in the discourse of candidates in the 2020 U.S. presidential election”. Journal of language and politics, v. 20, n. 5, pp. 676-695. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.21033.ros
  • Rubio-Fabián, Roberto (2019). “La peligrosa desintermediación política”. La prensa gráfica, v. 104, n. 6, pp. 46. http://www.repo.funde.org/id/eprint/1552
  • Sadia, Azeema; Khan, F.; Bashir, Fatima (2018). “An overview of lexicon-based approach for sentiment analysis”. 3rd International electrical engineering conference, 5 pp. https://ieec.neduet.edu.pk/2018/Papers_2018/15.pdf
  • Sánchez-García, Pilar; Merayo-Álvarez, Noemí; Calvo-Barbero, Carla; Diez-Gracia, Alba (2023). “Spanish technological development or artificial intelligence applied to journalism: Companies and tools for documentation, production and distribution of information”. Profesional de la información, v. 32, n. 2. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2023.mar.08
  • Singh, Narishia; Wijegunawardhana, Anuradha (2018). “Impact of big data and political microtargeting on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign”. International research conference, pp. 28-34. http://ir.kdu.ac.lk/handle/345/2485
  • Smith, Christopher A. (2019). “Weaponized iconoclasm in Internet memes featuring the expression ‘fake news’”. Discourse & communication, v. 13, n. 3. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481319835639
  • Tamul, Daniel J.; Ivory, Adrienne-Holz; Hotter, Jessica; Wolf, Jordan (2019). “All the president’s tweets: effects of exposure to Trump’s “fake news”. Accusations on perceptions of journalists, news stories, and issue evaluation”. Mass communication and society, v. 23, n. 3. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2019.1652760
  • Timoshenko, Aartem; Hauser, John (2019). “Identifying customer needs from user-generated content”. Marketing science, v. 38, n. 1. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2018.1123
  • Tong, Chau; Gill, Hyungjin; Li, Jianing; Valenzuela, Sebastián; Rojas, Hernando (2020). “Fake news is anything they say!” – Conceptualization and weaponization of fake news among the American public”. Mass communication and society, v. 23, n. 5, pp. 755-778. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2020.1789661
  • Van-Dijck, José (2016). La cultura de la conectividad: una historia crítica de las redes sociales. Siglo Veintiuno. ISBN: 978 987 629 669 4
  • Van-Dijk, Teun (1990). La noticia como discurso. Comprensión, estructura y producción de la información. Paidós. ISBN: 84 7509 622 0
  • Waheed, Anum; Salam, Abdus; Bangash, Javed-Iqbal; Bangash, Maria (2021). “Lexicon and learn-based sentiment analysis for web spam detection”. IEEESEM, v. 9, n. 3. https://www.ieeesem.com/researchpaper/Lexicon_and_Learn_Based_Sentiment_Analysis_for_Web_Spam_Detection.pdf
  • Wardle, Claire; Derekshan, Hossein (2017) Information disorder: toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making. Council of Europe report DGI09, 31st October. Brussels: Council of Europe. https://rm.coe.int/information-disorder-toward-an-interdisciplinary-framework-for-researc/168076277c
  • Wu, Yanfang (2019). “Is automated journalistic writing less biased? An experimental test of auto-written and human-written news stories”. Journalism practice, v. 1, n. 21. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2019.1682940
  • Xia, Ethan; Yue, Han; Liu, Hongfu (2021). “Tweets sentiment analysis of the 2020 U.S. presidential election”. Proceedings of WWW’21. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3442442.3452322
  • Zimmer, Franziska; Scheibe, Katrin; Stock, Mechtild; Stock, Wolfgang G. (2019). “Fake news in social media: Bad algorithms or biased users?”. JISTaP, v. 7, n. 2, pp. 40-53. https://doi.org/10.1633/JISTaP.2019.7.2.4