Calling the News Fake

The term Fake News is present in various debates and discourses. However, both, its intension and extension are unclear, and the question, whether the term Fake News refers to a proper concept at all is not yet answered.

In this paper, I present a concept analysis of Fake News from an ordinary language point of view. I will advise against a particular way of dealing with Fake News and will suggest another interpretation. I argue for the hypothesis that the act of claiming something as Fake News descriptively assigns truth values to certain statements. My aim is to demonstrate that referring to something as Fake News, is an act to enhance and support one’s own believes. There is a normative dimension of identifying something as Fake News. Claiming something to be Fake News states both, that things are not and should not be as described.