FAKE NEWS AS AN EMERGING GENRE: DISCURSIVE REGULARITIES AND CREDIBILITY EFFECTS IN DIGITAL TEXTS

Abstract

This article analyzes fake news as a discursive phenomenon, drawing on genre theory and contributions from discourse genre studies to understand how false texts produce credibility effects in digital environments. The study adopts a qualitative, descriptive-interpretive approach, with a corpus consisting of two pieces of disinformation fact-checked by the G1 Fato ou Fake portal, collected in January 2026, along with their corresponding verification texts. From a Bakhtinian perspective, the analysis examines thematic, stylistic, and compositional dimensions of the texts, as well as the conditions of circulation that foster their acceptability and sharing. The results indicate recurring patterns such as the fabrication of pseudo-visual evidence, the simulation of amateurism, the verbal economy typical of social media, the appropriation of institutional language, and the exploitation of emotions, in addition to strategies of incompleteness that shift to the reader the task of filling in gaps of meaning. In contrast, fact-checking texts display a recurrent structure guided by the explicit presentation of the verdict, methodological transparency, source attribution, and a pedagogical function aimed at fostering critical reading practices. The study concludes that analyzing the discursive regularities of disinformation can support proposals for critical literacy in Portuguese language education, strengthening the ability to identify and confront misleading texts.