Disinformation about history, democratic memory and national symbols in social media. Study of the hoaxes debunked by the Spanish fact-checkers

Abstract

Right-wing populist digital activists intensively resort to disinformation. In Spain, the historical revisionism, the opposition to democratic memory policies and the alleged defense of the national symbols form an essential part of the agenda of the far-right. The aim of this paper is to analyze the characteristics of disinformation about those topics that has circulated in the country through social media. The research applies a content analysis to 255 denials published by the four Spanish fact-checkers accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network. The results show the preponderance of hoaxes with multimedia resources and textual accompaniment, constructed by falsehoods and anonymous sources, referring to events of the present and not the past, and starring the political class in a negative way. Right-wing protagonists obtain positive evaluations more frequently than left-wing ones.