Novel weapons: the invasion of fake news and the evolution of political news ecosystems

In this dissertation, I work to answer the question: how are recent attempts to insert fake news into political news ecosystems similar to and different from previous attempts? To this end, I present a historical timeline of major technological shifts that have altered political news ecosystems, create a new framework for analyzing how fake news producers use social media as a novel weapon to help fake news invade and thrive within political news ecosystems, and develop new terminology to discuss large-scale trolling tactics used to disrupt political news ecosystems. To develop the novel weapons framework for this study, I first identify and then examine three aspects of social media that are reappropriated to transform it into a novel weapon: hashtags, bots, and trolling. Then, I unpack how fake news producers and disseminators leveraged hashtags, bots, and trolling in tandem to create more complex systems that were able to introduce and disseminate fake news that went relatively unnoticed by the general public. From here, I enact this framework, applying it to the fake news surrounding the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. In doing so, I demonstrate that the novel weapons framework is easily applicable and able to provide an analytical depiction not only of the initial infiltration of fake news into a political news ecosystem but also the tactics that are used to help it thrive. My recalibration of the novel weapons framework aims to expand ecology theory in the field of Rhetoric and Composition by adapting invasive species theory and the novel weapons hypothesis to create a lens through which we can analyze how new actors or agents enter and manipulate digital ecologies. However, rather than focus on individual actors circulating fake news, this framework allows us to identify and focus on the systemic and ecological invasion of fake news.. Additionally, this framework provides a historical lens with which one can observe or analyze how the invasive species’ role or relationship with the ecosystem fluctuates over time. Lastly, through the development of the novel weapons framework, I developed new terminology in order to differentiate between the umbrella term of troll and the large entities that use trolling tactics for much higher stakes. In this dissertation, such bad actors and tactics are referred to as organized, agenda-driven, strategic trolls or OASTs. By separating entities like foreign governments and politically affiliated organizations that use trolling tactics from the colloquial term troll, I also separates them from the stereotypes and cultural frameworks that view trolls as minimal threats, annoyances, singular people, or subversive tactics to oppressive and bigoted language and ideologies. Creating this distinction allows us to focus on the more complex levels and higher stakes that are involved when dealing with OASTs. This new terminology now fits the impact that these entities can create. Overall, then, this dissertation develops a new framework for studying and analyzing fake news, the expansion of terminology when discussing trolls, and the practical application of the novel weapons framework.