Scandinavian political journalism in a time of fake news and disinformation

Focusing on fake news, disinformation, and misinformation, this chapter addresses how the main actors in the political communication process (politicians, news media, and citizens) deal with the increasingly complex information environment in Scandinavia. In this chapter, we examine how politicians apply the term “fake news” in relation to both news media and political opponents. Additionally, we address how the news media deal with the challenge of fake news and disinformation, typically through verification and fact-checking. Lastly, we examine how citizens relate to fake news, employing data from the Reuters Digital News Report (Newman et al., 2018) from the three Scandinavian countries: Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. This study demonstrates that we need new methods for digital source criticism, verification, and media literacy in an information environment suited to the information manipulation of text, icons, images, and video.