A Model for Understanding and Assessing Semi-Fake Scientific News Reporting

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance – as well as the difficulty – of providing the general public with reliable news reporting on scientific findings. The overabundance of scientific news published during the pandemic made it extremely difficult for much of the lay public to assess the reliability of the information made available by conventional and unconventional news outlets. Particularly challenging to assess were news articles which, while not reporting any falsehood, failed to report scientific findings accurately, thus (typically unwittingly) contributing to spreading misinformation. This study outlines a model for understanding and assessing this type of scientific news reporting, which, following Musi and Reed (2022), is here called “semi-fake” news. The model relies on the notions of framing, relevance, and argumentative fallacy to provide a comprehensive account of the way in which scientific news reporting can end up being fallacious even while not being false. The informal fallacy of “wrenching from context”, coupled with framing strategies which heighten the relevance of some aspects of the original scientific findings over others, appears to play a key role in common instances of semi-fake news. The model offers useful insights into the mechanisms leading to the production of misleading news and can be used in both news literacy programmes and in news reporting training and guidelines aimed at prospective science reporters.