Is "Fake News" The New 'Conspiracy Theory'?

After Donald Trump's election as President of U.S. and the big mistakes (somebody call them lies) of media, it seems a new "star" has born... the "Fake News".
I just read an interesting article about that:

"Barack Obama on fake news: ‘We have problems’ if we can’t tell the difference The US president denounced the spate of misinformation across social media platforms, including Facebook, suggesting American politics can be affected. -Guardian
Is fake news the new “conspiracy theory.” We’ve read that it may be, and it seems likely to us.

That’s because “conspiracy theory” has seemingly lost credibility as a way of dismissing anti-mainstream critiques, and it can be argued that “fake news” is being substituted.

We recently wrote about the decline and fall of “conspiracy theory” as an effective denigration of Deep State critiques."
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The “fake news” meme is all over search-engine news and prominent people like Obama are speaking out about the meme and basically endorsing it.

But it all strikes us as rather desperate.

Conspiracy Theory is far less prone to analysis than “fake news.” It has persisted so long and been so successful because it is difficult to quantify a “conspiracy” and thus the dismissal cannot be either confirmed or denied.

If “conspiracy theory” really has lost impact – and apparently it has – as a way of debunking criticism of the Deep State, this is certainly a setback for modern propaganda.

Additionally, “when it comes to “fake news,” the mainstream media is going to have to speak with one voice in order to disparage factual information.

But fewer and fewer people believe the mainstream media. Thus, if the media places its communicative muscle behind tarring certain cogent criticisms as “false,” it will likely only speed up the decline of mainstream credibility.

Conclusion: Of course, those in power could ban the Internet outright, but it’s probably too late for that – and wouldn’t work effectively in any case.
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