Disinformation is a result of the neoliberal shift to semiocapitalism and a post-Fordist mode of production – fake news will always exist if we maintain a system that stands to profit off immaterial labor

This kind of relationship between individuals and institutions operationalised through international flows of information, labour, and capital exemplifies a Post-Fordist logic outlined at the start of this article. Fabricated stories or not, all creation of online content, whether news or opinion, is a form of precarious employment that foregrounds various aspects of Post-Fordism, many of which lie outside the scope of this article. If this article were to focus directly on the kind of employment of those writing fake news stories, a Post-Fordist lens would highlight the immaterial, flexible, individualised nature of that work. However, it should be clear that the proliferation of fake news impacted and incorporated a much larger group of individuals than simply those writing the stories. By focusing on the wider effects, rather than specifically the niche group of writers, the consequences of online advertising supported content demonstrates a proliferation of Post-Fordist logic, even in the lives of those whose employment is firmly material, industrial, or Fordist. In particular, the writing, reading and sharing of fake news articles can be seen as components of an immaterial labour arrangement. Immaterial labour is described by Maurizio Lazzarato as: ‘the activity that produces the ‘cultural content’ of the commodity, immaterial labour involves a series of activities that are not normally recognised as ‘work’—in other words, the kinds of activities involved in defining and fixing cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms, and, more strategically, public opinion.’ (2014, p 133) Immaterial labour is not unique to Post-Fordism, it has served a role stabilising previous economic arrangements, for example, the marketing of cultural values in the twentieth-century that Adorno and Horkheimer refer to as the culture industry. However, the immaterial labour of producing fake news does not shape the values of consumers in order to sell them commodities. Instead, fake news functions by both fixing certain norms and acting as the commodity that matches such a demand; however, such a demand is exacerbated, rather than fulfilled. These norms and values are part of another element of Post- Fordist labour: affective capitalism. Such a framework highlights the affective qualities of fake news: the reactions it creates as well as the social atmosphere it builds upon. Kylie Jarrett, following the work of Brian Massumi (2002), describes affect as ‘those sensory experiences of movement and feeling that are part of the social, cultural and psychological experience of individuals, but which lie beyond the directly signifying properties of discourse. It is differentiated from emotion for it is as an embodied intensity that is outside conscious articulation.’ (Jarrett, 2015, p 121) Here, the similarity to the notion of the ‘general intellect’ should be noted. Jarrett uses such a perspective within a feminist critique of digital labour in order to argue that it is a mistake to describe individuals online only in terms of rational action. Isto Huvila continues such a call in the context of search engines. Huvila argues that rather than seeing individuals as rational information seekers, what ‘counts in the contemporary affective economy of knowing, is the affective attachment to a sensation of being able to know’ (Huvila, 2016, p 577). However, although affect must have a significant bearing on the spread of fake news, it is difficult to establish a clear understanding of how and why fake news gained traction, with readers, in the way that it did. Were individuals convinced of the accuracy of the stories or were they shared for other reasons? In taking a large-scale economic focus, this article outlines the economic and advertising-dependent incentives behind the creation and proliferation of fake news, but does not address the smaller-scale actions of individuals, rational or otherwise, on which such a proliferation depends. However, even if nothing is known about their reception, it is the economic structure that provided the informational affordances required for fake news to flourish. It is this economic structure that was jointly reinforced by the way in which Google and Facebook prioritise online content.