Characteristics Analysis of American Current Political Fake News in Social Media Under Morris’s Semiotics Three Dimensions

Abstract

In recent years, fake news has proliferated rampantly. This research examines current political false news on social media (X) from 2022 to 2024 through the three dimensions of Morris’s semiotics, aiming to deconstruct the semiotic mechanisms of fake news at a more fundamental level and reveal underlying semiotic patterns. Findings reveal that, from a syntactic dimension analysis, two typical textual structural characteristics emerged across current political fake news during this period: emergency symbol initiated structures and a fragmented reading structure. The temporal evolution of corpus structure primarily manifested in two aspects: the polarisation of punctuation-using and the adoption of emojis. Semantic analysis further identified two core features within the corpus: fabricated credibility and violent metaphor. The temporal trajectory of the corpus reveals semantic complexification and defence forwarding. Pragmatically, the strategies consistently employ two tactics: image denigration and motivate interaction. Longitudinal analysis indicates that these pragmatic features evolve over time—transitioning from straightforward opinion commentary to fake news that are meticulously crafted, user-baiting and attention-driven.