The Appearance of Fake News in the Post-truth Era; Goals and Consequences

Social media provide a platform that enables the online users to communicate and exchanges messages with other users effectively and in the shortest possible time. The emergence of these types of platforms in today's network society has posed as a challenge to almost all aspects of social life, including professional and organizational processes of news production as one of the pillars of the existence and survival of modern societies and governments. If social media create and share fake news, the users may be deceived and be prone to make unusual decisions in their social life. Hence in the post-truth era, online users have set aside the objective investigation and analysis of the information they receive via social media and are almost unquestionably dominated by various harmful information. In this new era, a complete understanding of the dimensions, goals and consequences of fake news, which is an emerging harmful phenomenon, seems to be imperative if its destructive dimensions are to be confronted. The present essay addresses four structured themes, i.e. "difference between fake news and news", "similarity between fake news and news", "the goals of fake news production" and "the consequences of fake news" through a comprehensive study of the existing scientific resources, conducting in-depth interviews and by employing thematic analysis method. This study suggests that in terms of such components as "news format and professionalism", fake news is similar to authentic news, while they are different in terms of such component as "production on an informal media platform". Fake news is spread for such purposes as supplying psychological warfare and safeguarding the financial, political and ideological interests of the producers.Fake news has such consequences as jeopardizing the national security and the psyche of the public as well as raising the probability of making decisions on the basis of disinformation.