Shades of fake news: how fallacies influence consumers’ perception

So far, fake news has been mostly associated with fabricated content that intends to manipulate or shape opinions. In this manuscript, we aim to establish that the perception of information as fake news is influenced by not only fabricated content but also by the rhetorical device used (i.e., how news authors phrase the message). Based on argumentation theory, we advance that fallacies – a subset of well-known deceptive rhetorical devices – share a conceptual overlap with fake news and are therefore suitable for shedding light on the issue’s grey areas. In a first two-by-two, between-subject, best-worst scaling experiment (case 1), we empirically test whether fallacies are related to the perception of information as fake news and to what extent a reader can identify them. In a second two-by-two experiment, we presume that a reader believes that some of a sender’s messages contain fake news and investigate recipients’ subsequent reactions. We find that users distinguish nuances based on the applied fallacies; however, they will not immediately recognise some fallacies as fake news while overemphasising others. Regarding users’ reactions, we observe a more severe reaction when the message identified as fake news comes from a company instead of an acquaintance.