True, fake and alternative: a topology of news and its implications for brands
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-11-2018-2142 |
| Date | 19 June 2019 |
| Pages | 144-149 |
| Published date | 19 June 2019 |
| Author | Pierre Berthon,Ekin Pehlivan,Taylan Yalcin,Tamara Rabinovich |
| Subject Matter | Marketing |
True, fake and alternative: a topology of news
and its implications for brands
Pierre Berthon
McCallum Graduate School, Bentley University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA
Ekin Pehlivan
Martin V. Smith School of Business and Economics, California State University Channel Islands, Camarillo, California, USA
Taylan Yalcin
California State University Channel Islands, Camarillo, California, USA, and
Tamara Rabinovich
McCallum Graduate School, Bentley University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA
Abstract
Purpose –Berthon and Pitt (2018) recently highlighted the symbiotic relationship between fake news and brands. This paper aims to draw on
semiotics to refine the fake/real news dichotomy to a fourfold typology.
Design/methodology/approach –First, the authors turn to semiotics and review Greimas’(1966) semiotic square. Second, they use this
framework to refine the fake/real news dichotomy into a four-fold typology. Third, they illustrate each type with a news report on the topic
of climate change. Fourth, they apply this framework to reveal four types of brand: real, fake, empty and ironic.
Findings –Given that brand communications are heterogeneous, the authors suggest that the typology can be reconceptualized as dimensions
and brands communications decoded accordingly. They conclude by exploring further opportunities offered by the semiotic square for
interpretive investigation.
Originality/value –The value of the paper lies in the novel use of the semiotic square to shed light on both news and brand communications.
Keywords Semiotics, Brand communication, New media, Fake news, Semiotic square
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
Recently, Berthon and Pitt (2018) highlighted the
symbiotic relationship between fake news and brands.
Brands both finance and enable fake news by paying to
support the platforms hosting these stories. They also
legitimize fake news by co-presence, for example
advertising adjacent to a fake story. The effect also runs the
other way: on the one hand, brands can become the target
of fake news, and on the other hand, brands can become
contaminated by association with fake news.
However, in an era of fake news, it is instrumental to reflect
on marketing’s role in legitimizing dubious “truth”claims
through brand communications. Indeed, questionable brand
claims are not new. For more than a century, marketers have
striven to turn citizens into consumers (Arens and Sheldon,
1932): marketing was the demand-side solution to absorb the
increased supply enabled by mass production (Bartels, 1976).
In doing so marketers became proponentsand propagators of a
postmodern world view; one in which reality gives way to
hyperreality, unity to fragmentation and utility to symbolism
(Venkatesh, 1999). Hyperreality is where objective reality is
replaced with an intersubjective, linguistically created world:
there is no objective truth. Fragmentation is where wholes are
deconstructed into dis-connected parts: order is replaced with
chaos (things no longerneed to make logical sense). Symbolism
is where signs becomes detached from their objective referents
and exist only in relation to other signifiers. Thus, the use of
something is no longer in itsutility in the objective world but in
its communicative power: image becomes detached from
reality, signifier from signified.Thus, through appeals to magic
thinking and the emotions, marketinglegitimized ideas of truth
being subjective, contradictory values and behaviors being
normal and words (and other symbols) speaking louder than
actions.
Thus, marketing has helped blur the line between true
and false, and helped usher in an era of fake news (Berthon
and Pitt, 2018 for a full discussion). However, to see
marketing’s shadow-side is only a first step. The next step,
to borrow a Jungian metaphor, is to reintegrate shadow and
egointoagreaterwhole(Jung, 1960). In this paper, we
attempt to move toward reintegration through exploring
the relationship between truth and falsity in brand
communications. Specifically,wesuggesttheneedtomove
Thecurrentissueandfulltextarchiveofthisjournalisavailableon
Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/1061-0421.htm
Journal of Product & Brand Management
29/2 (2020) 144–149
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-11-2018-2142]
Received 30 November 2018
Revised 22 March 2019
Accepted 17 April 2019
144
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