Semantic aspects of “fake news” and its status as a neologism

This study investigates the semantic change of “fake news” and its status as a neologism. Through analysis of a diachronic news corpus spanning 2003 to 2025, this study traces the term’s emergence as a morphological neologism in 2003, followed by a rapid increase in frequency after 2016. The analysis demonstrates that “fake news” acquired new semantic features-[+political purpose], [+economic purpose], and [+post-truth]-and that its semantic entrenchment has progressed over time. In particular, [+post-truth] evolved as a rhetorical device in political discourse, where “real news” was stigmatized as “fake news.” The findings present an integrated model for neologism research and offer implications for critical discourse analysis and media literacy within the common lexicon.