Plan Seminar in Media and Communication Studies with Aryna Creangă

The social production of truth in the Romanian news world: fact-checkers and independent media at work.

Lying is no news for humanity. Manipulations, falsehoods, and lies have been part of history and were the objects of studies of many researchers, while their impact have been well documented. Still, the digital age acts like a catalyst for disinformation and makes us witness something never seen before - ”information pollution at a global scale” (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017, p.5). With this in mind, the thesis will explore two main areas that remain under re-searched within the disinformation field – the ones of news media and of the existing relations and tensions between journalists and fact-checkers. Engaging with ethnography as its core method, the study will focus on the daily practices of journalists working in independent media outlets and fact-checkers with the primary aim to understand how they organize information in the Romanian news world to make it truthful.