Fact or fake?: the role of referentiation in the construction of points of view in fake news and fact-checking

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to analyse the construction of referents in fake news, observing how they act in the presentation of points of view mobilized by the authors and, consequently, in the argumentative orientation of the texts. To achieve this purpose, a documentary analysis is carried out of a fake news and its respective fact-checking on vaccination against Covid-19, published in Agência Lupa between the months of January and March 2021. How theoretical basis, the referentiation is presented based on the discussions undertaken by Cavalcante (2005, 2013), Cavalcante, Custódio Filho and Brito (2014), Marcuschi (2004), Matos (2018), Mondada and Dubois (2019) and Silva and Custódio Filho (2013); the reflection on point of view comes from the studies of Rabatel, (2013, 2016) and Cortez (2011, 2013) and, finally, the argumentation in the speech is developed through the reading of Amossy (2020a, 2020b) and Cavalcante et al. (2020). As a result, there was a dialogue established between the first speaker/enunciator and the other enunciators mobilized, to defend a certain point of view and build an argumentative orientation that guides the interlocutor's interpretation. In the case of fake news, with the aim of creating an effect of truth, the author attributes utterances to the voices of authority that he inserts into the text, even if they do not assume enunciative responsibility for these points of view. In a different way, the fact-checking is concerned with indicating the source of the utterances, making direct and more contextualized quotes.