The Semiotics of Fact-Checked Fake News: A Mixed-Method Analysis of English-Language Facebook and X Posts (January–June 2025)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31185/wjfh.Vol22.Iss4/Pt1.1680Keywords:
semiotics, fake news, populism, social media, multimodalityAbstract
The current paper focuses on the way visual and textual signs in fake news produce populist narratives on Facebook and X. Different from prior literature that emphasizes psychological and political effects, the research explores the creation of disinformation through semiotics. An explanatory sequential mixed-method approach is applied in analyzing 200 English-language posts posted between January and June 2025, 100 posts from each social network site and verified by trusted fact-checking organizations. Content analysis allowed for identifying prevailing themes, while multimodal analysis used such notions as myth and connotation by Barthes and the visual grammar of Kress and van Leeuwen. It was found that anti-elite narratives and threatening imagery were prominent, with anger and fear being prevalent emotions. Facebook was using more manipulated images and national icons, while X utilized slogans and hashtags. In general, fake news can be viewed as a multimodal semiotic system producing political identities and ideologies.
Downloads
References
Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211–236.
Al-Mansoori, N. J. O. (2025). The poetics of unreality in the novel “A Small Death” by Muhammad Hasan Alwan. Wasit Journal for Human Sciences, 21(2), 27–43.
Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies. Hill and Wang.
Brady, W. J., Wills, J. A., Jost, J. T., Tucker, J. A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2017). Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(28), 7313–7318.
Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. L. (2018). Designing and conducting mixed methods research (3rd ed.). SAGE.
Eco, U. (1976). A theory of semiotics. Indiana University Press.
Farkas, J., & Schou, J. (2018). Post-truth, fake news and democracy: Mapping the politics of misinformation. Journal of Media and Communication Research, 34(65), 6–25.
Highfield, T., & Leaver, T. (2016). Instagrammatics and digital methods: Studying visual social media, from selfies and GIFs to memes and emoji. Communication Research and Practice, 2(1), 47–62.
Jassim, H. A. H. (2024). Exploring semantic relations in the Qur’anic discourse of self: A study on textual syntax. Wasit Journal for Human Sciences, 20(56), 89–162.
Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: The grammar of visual design (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Lazer, D. M., Baum, M., Benkler, Y., et al. (2018). The science of fake news. Science, 359(6380), 1094–1096.
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K., & Cook, J. (2017). Beyond misinformation: Understanding and coping with post-truth. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(4), 353–369.
Moffitt, B. (2016). The global rise of populism: Performance, political style, and representation. Stanford University Press.
Neuendorf, K. A. (2017). The content analysis guidebook (2nd ed.). SAGE.
Saadoun, S. H., & Al-Dalfi, R. K. (2025). The linguistic responses of modern scholars to Al-Munjid dictionary by Louis Ma’louf (d. 1946): A study of plural forms as a model. Wasit Journal for Human Sciences, 21(1), 17–33.
Tandoc, E. C., Lim, Z. W., & Ling, R. (2018). Defining “fake news”: A typology of scholarly definitions. Digital Journalism, 6(2), 137–153.
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146–1151.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Lect. Bushra Abdul-Taj Abdul-Ameer
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
