Phenomenon of Information Misrepresentation in Mass-Media: Versions of Facts

Abstract

The article discusses the phenomenon of factual information misrepresentation in popular print media. From the point of view of the authors, misrepresentation is determined by a general communicative pattern — the process of misrepresentation information during its transfer; the ideology of a particular edition and the tendentiousness of the media in general; striving for informational priority and a professional perspective of presenting information. Understanding the misrepresentation in the media discourse as a substitution, falsehood, fiction, and the transformation of factual information, the authors attempt to generalize the ways of translating facts (truthful information) into a version of facts. Based on the material of the “near-political narrative”, which is part of the peripheral zone of political discourse and includes texts dedicated to the politician's relatives or ancestors, as well as his personal and even intimate life, the authors distinguish three main directions that contribute to the emergence of versions of facts. These are: extra-textual factors; a group of proper text methods; change of the axiological mode of the media. It is proved that the subjective mode of modern media determines the use of not so much false information as of transformed information, the share of which is steadily increasing and begins to determine the specifics of modern journalistic text formation.

Keywords

• information
• misrepresentation
• version of the fact
• mass-media
• political discourse
• near-political narrative
• genres