ABSTRACT
The term “fake news” has caught on like wildfire to describe anything from viral stories based on untruths in order to influence voters, entire media networks, or Internet hoaxes. All of these descriptions include the suggestion that the information conveyed is deliberately designed to mislead recipients and influence their beliefs or behavior. In this chapter, the ways in which this poses a challenge to democracy will be introduced to the reader using current examples and subsequently discussed via an interview with Michael Lynch to deepen our understanding of this challenge using Habermasian frameworks and updated interpretations of them.
