The Role of the Term “Fake News” in U.S. Alternative Media: Shaping Political Discourse and Hyperpartisanship

This study examines how the term “fake news” is strategically deployed in U.S. alternative media by analyzing Newsmax and Occupy Democrats as right- and left-leaning outlets. Drawing on Hallin’s sphere model and Egelhofer et al.’s coding categories, it uses manual content analysis and latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling to identify rhetorical functions and patterns. Findings show that the term “fake news” functions mainly as a weaponized label to delegitimize opponents rather than describe misinformation. The results show how alternative media redraw boundaries between consensus, controversy, and deviance, underscoring their role in intensifying partisan discourse and redefining political communication.