Fake News and Disinformation in Iraqi Social Media Platform: Representational and Argumentation Analysis

Abstract

With the spread of the technology and social media platforms and without successful fact-checking procedures that can verify and eliminate all fake news, everybody can be exposed to a daily dose of misleading and false content that can be risky. Such disinformation is often a means of political gain when there is a political divide as in the 2016 US presidential election (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017). The 2018 Iraqi election is not exception in this regard. Thus, this study aims to explore disinformation practices and mechanisms in Iraq and how political blocks, or individual candidates are targeted on social media platforms .The data was collected from a Facebook page called ‘Tech 4 Peace التقنية من اجل السلام' which is designated to expose the fake news and lies spread on social media in Iraq. To achieve this aim, Wodak and Meyer (2016) Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) to critical discourse analysis (CDA) has been used as a framework for the analysis. Having categorized the fake news according to their themes, the results showed the fake news focuses on sensitive cultural topics as religion, reputation. honour as well as an accusation of candidates of being agents/proxies to other countries. Such themes were utilized to attack, (dis)credit, (de)legitimize political and religious opponents.