Social psychology and fake news: a critical realism approach

• Main Author: Pereira, Marcos Emanoel
• Publication Date: 2022
• Format: Article
• Language: por
• Source: Signo (Santa Cruz do Sul. Online)
• Download full: https://online.unisc.br/seer/index.php/signo/article/view/17849
• topic: Fake News; Psicologia social; Realismo crítico; Heurísticas; Vieses; Fake news; Social psychology; Critical realism; Heuristics; Bias

The article presented here is about fake news and, in a broader sense, the use of disinformation as a persuasion resource. We defend the point that fake news is a complex phenomenon that is apprehensible in the concrete conditions that preside over the manifestations of any event. To understand them, we must a) identify what fake news is, differentiating them from similar and analogous phenomena; b) recognize that, as it is a real phenomenon and must be analyzed in line with theoretical perspectives that allow considering it in its complexity; c) once understood as real phenomena and analyzed from a perspective that is both realistic and critical, we will consider the possibility of analyzing them from the perspective of social psychology, based on the constitution of a corpus; and d) we will present some suggestions, resulting from the arguments highlighted in the previous sections, that offer indicators of how we can face the flood of disinformation to which we are subject due to the demands imposed by current technological development and political polarization.