Gender disinformation: analysing hoaxes on Maldito Feminismo

Abstract

Information disorder (satire or parody, false connections, misleading content, false context, imposter content, manipulated content or fabricated content) must be considered a social problem that is causing collective damages and threating digital society. Women, in particular, are becoming victims of hostilities on the virtual interaction spaces. This problem is currently known as “digital sexism” and “gender disinformation”. In this space, verification journalism, a trendy format, aims to reduce the effects of hoaxes introducing the fact-checking process in its professional routines. However, this is still a minority task. In order to contribute to the study of the disinformation phenomenon in relation to online messages about women, this research has developed a systematic tool to classify hoaxes that have been refuted by the platform Maldita.es, specifically, fake news that has been published on it sections Maldito Feminismo (N=71).

The results of this study (internal validity) show that hoaxes detected by Maldito Feminismo are misleading content that expect to damage feminism (this is the main topic of fake news) and have a political purpose. These information disorders are displayed in text format and are mainly created and distributed on social networks. Moreover, although users collaborate and participate detecting and reporting hoaxes, the platform Maldito Feminismo identifies, locates and denounces most of the fake news.