Instrumentalization of Fake News and Fake News Laws: A Content Analysis of Hong Kong Newspapers in Transitional Times

The debate around disinformation has shifted to the political instrumentalization of the term fake news, a growing global trend affecting both democratic and less-democratic countries. While researchers have paid much attention to the consequences of disinformation or how fake news allegations could harm journalism and democracies, few have examined how the term may be instrumentalized to restrict press and political freedoms in non-Western contexts under an authoritarian turn. Through a quantitative content analysis, this paper explores how the term fake news is used in Hong Kong's newspapers with diverse political inclinations. The paper goes on to analyze how the discursive uses of the term may be connected to the framing of fake news as an existential threat and to the legitimization or critique of fake news laws. The findings show that uses of the term as an attack to adverse media outlets and political opponents are most frequent in state-owned newspapers. State-owned newspapers are also most likely to frame fake news as an existential security issue and legislation as a solution. Implications of the findings as well as theoretical and empirical contributions are discussed.