Introduction to the Special Issue on Fake News: Definitions and Approaches

More specifically, the study of fake news can benefit from folkloristic attention to the epistemologies and rhetoric of truth; the transmission process of performance and its impact on form, function, aesthetics, and content; and the nuanced understanding of institutional and vernacular power that do not always adhere to expected social or political identities, thanks to the multiplicity of roles we embody and the regular code-switching we engage in to manage them. [...]the authors in this special issue of JAF apply folklore methodology and theory to interpret fake news both as, and as stimulus for, expressive culture. The outpouring of memes, jokes, T-shirts, songs, protests, and public gatherings in response to Kellyanne Conway's repeated reference to the fictitious "Bowling Green Massacre" (Evans 2018; Goldstein 2018) or WIRED magazine's claim that CRISPR (gene-editing technology) could solve global problems like hunger, pollution, and disease (Lowthorp 2018) emerge in response to "fake news," and, in doing so, they create their own folklore traditions. According to recent Gallup polls, trust in institutions in this country is at a record low (Norman 2016).