’The Devil Goes by Many Names’: A Critical Examination of Propaganda, PR, and Fake News as Forms of Information Disorder

Abstract

This article offers an outline of the terms propaganda and public relations before addressing the contemporary phenomenon of fake news. We identify commonalities and differences between these three manipulative practices and show that, rather than being exceptions, they constitute regular techniques of governance in both liberal democracies and more authoritarian systems of rule. Developing a set of family resemblances, we then show that propaganda, PR, and fake news belong to the overarching phenomenon of information disorder and are mainly distinguished by their reliance upon different aesthetic conventions, dissemination technologies, and business models.