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Bryan Culler

Mr. Benjamin Good

R C 2001-108

18 June 2018

Donald Trump’s “Fake News” Conspiracy

Fake news is a concept that has existed for over a century. While the term has evolved

both in context and in frequency of usage, no one person has impacted the meaning of fake news

as much as Donald Trump. Trump has created his own conspiracy theory with the phrase fake

news, using it to describe news sources that disfavor him. Trump’s usage and conspiracy

concerning fake news has impacted how his supporters view the media and himself. As a result,

Trump’s fake news conspiracy impacted the results of the 2016 presidential election.

Looking into how Trump’s fake news impacted the election, it is first important to

understand how his usage of the term differs from its original meaning. Trump has claimed on

Mike Huckabee’s talk show that “one of the greatest of all terms [he’s] come up with is fake”

(Coll 1). While he has resurfaced the popularity of such terminology, the origins of fake news

“date back to before the printing press” (Burkhardt 1). Fake news was originally used to

describe “propaganda and lies masquerading as news” (Coll 1). This classification of fake news

often came from third parties such as Russia & various African countries that spread and became

viral on social media, often due to their sensational content. This content was always objectively

false information posing in the formatting of a credible source. Such “manufactured stories-

‘Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President’ among them,” poisoned the

news ecosystem by making it considerably easier to stumble upon objectively false information
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disguised as news (Coll 1). Donald Trump has used the word in an entirely new meaning,

simply to describe all unfavorable news coverage. In one tweet, Trump even “went so far as to

say that ‘any negative polls are fake news’” (Kurtzleben 2). Fake news originally “telegraphed a

sense of danger about nefarious types intentionally sowing lies” (Kurtzleben 4). When Trump

uses fake news in his own context, he’s borrowing some of the original phrase’s connotation and

power.

There is a danger in the structure of his usage on a linguistic level. The danger lies in his

usage of the word “fake” in fake news. Kurtzleben references linguist, University of California,

Berkeley professor George Lakoff by citing his example. By putting the adjective black in front

of the word gun, it doesn’t negate that the gun is still a fully functioning weapon; it just specifies

a kind of gun. That black gun “still has the same primary function of any other gun” (Kurtzleben

3). However, if you place the adjective fake before the word gun, the gun can no longer shoot,

but it can deceive you into thinking it can shoot you. The word fake is troubling in this context

because a “fake does not have the primary function, but is intended to deceive you into thinking

that it does have that function” (Kurtzleben 3). By putting any other modifier before news, good

news, bad news, unbiased news, biased news, liberal news, conservative news, it still implies that

the news is still somehow news. News and media are not meant to be fake. In fact their purpose

is to be the exact opposite, to “pass along factual information that serves the public good, and the

people who create it intend it to be factual and to serve the public good” (Kurtzleben 3). When

Trump uses the term fake news in his invented context, the word fake implies that the news isn’t

serving the basic purposes of news, that the story is intended to serve something other than the

public good and the author intended to falsify the story. So by calling actual news outlets fake
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news, he is implying that they aren’t news at all. This implication has a major impact when

suggested by someone with as much influence and popularity as Donald Trump. It undermines

the “credibility of real news sources” and makes it more difficult for the press to “serve the

public good by revealing truths” (Kurtzleben 3). This threatens the very foundations of

democracy in the sense that democracy “requires that the press function to reveal real truths”

(Kurtzleben 3). When you start to suggest that there are “alternative facts and you start to

criticize your opponents for fake news, you’re undermining the credibility of the one institution

that holds all the others accountable” (Kurtzleben 6). Trump has gone even as far to say in one

of his many tweets on the topic that “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews,

@ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not [his] enemy, it is the enemy of the American People”

(Kurtzleben 2). Trump not only discredits the opposing media, but specifically calls them out

one by one and vilifies them. With just this simple detail in his rhetoric, Trump is able to

undermine any negative feedback that the news gives him, at least in the eyes of his supporters.

Trump’s diction becomes even more effective when you consider just how often he uses

the term fake news. It is evident to the general public that Trump doesn’t use the phrase

sparingly, but the actual amount is staggering. In a single day in September of 2017 Trump used

the term on Twitter eight times (Coll 1). The actual number of uses on Twitter alone is “more

than a hundred and fifty times” (Coll 1). This is only considering his Twitter usage. He also

uses the term frequently all over the news, referencing the phrase seven times in a single news

conference (Kurtzleben 2). Trump has a great deal of media attention due to his frequently

outlandish statements and nature and he doesn’t waste any opportunity to expose viewers to his

rhetoric.
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Some people may argue that Trump’s diction and his conspiracy against opposing news

outlets could not possibly have a significant impact on voters. After all, Trump has not

succeeded in changing the definition of fake news for everyone. If you Google the phrase fake

news, you will find that it is used in two ways: the first being “the original sense” and the second

“to slam mainstream media organizations, often on behalf of right-leaning organizations”

(Kurtzleben 6). People still understand the original context of fake news and many may claim

that they don’t believe what Trump claims about his opponent newsgroups simply because it’s

obviously not true, merely a conspiracy theory. What these people don’t consider is that the only

thing that matters is that Trump’s ​supporters are impacted by his words. Jolley writes in “The

Detrimental Nature of Conspiracy Theories” that “conspiracy theories have been shown to

impact one’s beliefs, attitudes and behavioural intentions” and that mere exposure to such

theories can have a significant impact (Jolley 35). Jolley cites a study where people were

exposed to conspiracy information regarding NASA faking the moon landing and it was found

that not only did mere exposure result in “greater endorsement of belief in the moon landings

conspiracy theories” but also that participants were “unaware of the change in their conspiracy

endorsement” (Jolley 35). He backs up this point further by including a second study where

people were exposed to Oliver Stone’s ​JFK filme (a movie that highlights several conspiracy

theories regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy) and it was found that those

who viewed the movie “endorsed the conspiracy to a greater extent than those who had not yet

viewed the film” (Jolley 36). Mere exposure to conspiracy theories has been proved to have a

measurable impact on the exposed individual and often the individual may not even notice

making a conspiracy theory’s hidden power even more potent.

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When you consider Trump’s audience, his supporters, it is also critical to think about how

they might fit into the type of people that may be predisposed to likely believing in conspiracy

theories. Several studies have found that there is a significant correlation to belief in conspiracy

theories and feelings of “powerlessness”, “a low level of agreeableness and high levels of

political cynicism”, “negative attitudes towards powerful groups”, and a negative relationship to

“level of trust in others” (Thresher-Andrews 7; Lantian 19; Jolley 35). These are all traits that

Donald Trump was able to work with. Trump appealed to people who felt ignored and forgotten

by people of political power and society as a whole. It was no stretch for them to want to believe

that news reports bashing the one man they felt supported by were lying or fake. Studies in

conspiracy theory psychology have also found that there tends to be a heavy “confirmation bias,

where beliefs and ideas that are consistent with one’s own ideas tend to be reinforced while

alternative ideas are downplayed or ignored” (Thresher-Andrews). People whose beliefs aligned

with Trump’s positions and who felt a distrust concerning people in power (the media having

one of the greatest powers/influences of information) would be more inclined to believe such a

conspiracy that news opposing their candidate would be fake. One of the most important

components of maintaining conspiracy theory beliefs is how the conspiracy theory “allows

people to interpret events in ways that align well with their worldviews” (Wood 31). A

significant portion of Donald Trump's more committed supporters have been described as a

“loose movement” or “amalgam of conspiracy theorists, techno-libertarians, white nationalists,

Men’s Rights advocated, trolls, anti-feminists, and anti-immigration activists” (Coll 2). Such a

group with such extreme opinions are heavily predisposed to belief in Donald Trump’s fake
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news conspiracy as it fits in with how a great deal of them see the world and the reality of this

country.

The 2016 election may not have only been influenced by Trump’s rhetoric regarding fake

news, but also the amount of actual fake news circling the web at the time of the election. In a

study that drew from web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from an

online survey, it was found that social media was “an important but not dominant source of

election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their ‘most important’ source”

(Allcott & Gentzkow 1). What is dominant, however, is the sheer amount of fake news that

appeared three months before the election was held. Of the known false news stories that

appeared, those “favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while

those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times” (Allcott & Gentzkow 1). This study also

found that “just over half of those who recalled seeing them [believed] them” and that “people

are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they

have ideologically segregated social media networks” (Allcott & Gentzkow 2). While there was

certainly a large amount of fake news coming from both sides, fake news stories that favored

Donald Trump were seen by a significantly larger amount of the population and if over half the

people that saw these stories believed that they were true, it is undeniable that the fake news

soaking the internet around the time of the election ended up helping Trump to some degree.

From the spread of actual fake news all over the internet during the time of the 2016

Presidential election to the conspiracy theory started by Trump that actual news media sources

who opposed him were in themselves fake news, it cannot be denied that the concept and

conspiracy revolving fake news aided Trump’s side in the election process. It cannot be
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determined to what degree the fake news conspiracy influenced the election, and it certainly

cannot be claimed that it is the only factor that caused his victory. Regardless, with Trump’s

heavy use of the term fake news in his own conspiratorial context, he was able to win an election

that many people laughed at him for running in.

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Works Cited

Allcott, Hunt, and Matthew Gentzkow. “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016

Election.” ​Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 31, no. 2, 2017, pp. 211–236.

Burkhardt, Joanna M. “History of Fake News.” ​Library Technology Reports, vol. 53, no. 8,

2017, pp. 5–9.

Coll, Steve. “Donald Trump's ‘Fake News’ Tactics.” ​The New Yorker, 11 Dec. 2017,

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/donald-trumps-fake-news-tactics.

Jolley, Daniel. “The Detrimental Nature of Conspiracy Theories.” ​Psychology

Postgraduate Affairs Group, no. 88, Sept. 2013, pp. 35–38.

Kurtzleben, Danielle. “With 'Fake News,' Trump Moves From Alternative Facts To

Alternative Language.” ​NPR Politics, 17 Feb. 2017,

drwho.virtadpt.net/files/2017-02/alternative-facts-to-alternative-language.pdf.

Lantian, Anthony. “A Review of Different Approaches to Study Belief in Conspiracy

Theories.” ​Psychology Postgraduate Affairs Group, no. 88, Sept. 2013, pp. 19–20.

Thresher-Andrews, Christopher. “An Introduction into the World of Conspiracy.”

Psychology Postgraduate Affairs Group, no. 88, Sept. 2013, pp. 5–8.

Wood, Michael. “Has the Internet Been Good for Conspiracy Theorising?” ​Psychology

Postgraduate Affairs Group, no. 88, Sept. 2013, pp. 31–33.