Widespread deliberate fabrication presented as truth
The Dreadnought hoaxers in Abyssinian regalia ; the bearded figure on the far left is the writer Virginia Woolf .
A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into putting up the highest possible social currency in support of the hoax.[1]
Whereas the promoters of frauds, fakes, and scams devise them so that they will withstand the highest degree of scrutiny customary in the affair, hoaxers are confident, justifiably or not, that their representations will receive no scrutiny at all. They have such confidence because their representations belong to a world of notions fundamental to the victims' views of reality, but whose truth and importance they accept without argument or evidence, and so never question.
Some hoaxers intend eventually to unmask their representations as in fact a hoax so as to expose their victims as fools; seeking some form of profit, other hoaxers hope to maintain the hoax indefinitely, so that it is only when sceptical persons willing to investigate their claims publish their findings that at last they stand revealed as hoaxers.
History
Zhang Yingyu's social networking websites (in addition to the use of email for a modern type of
chain letter ).
Etymology
The English
better source needed
]
Definition
hocus pocus, the origin of the word
hoax .
[7] Robert Nares defined the word hoax as meaning "to cheat", dating from Thomas Ady 's 1656 book A candle in the dark, or a treatise on the nature of witches and witchcraft .[7]
The term hoax is occasionally used in reference to urban legends and rumors, but the
folklorist
Jan Harold Brunvand argues that most of them lack evidence of deliberate creations of falsehood and are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes, so the term should be used for only those with a probable conscious attempt to deceive.
[8] As for the closely related terms
practical joke and
prank , Brunvand states that although there are instances where they overlap,
hoax tends to indicate "relatively complex and large-scale fabrications" and includes deceptions that go beyond the merely playful and "cause material loss or harm to the victim."
[9]
According to Professor Lynda Walsh of the University of Nevada, Reno , some hoaxes – such as the Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814 , labeled as a hoax by contemporary commentators – are financial in nature, and successful hoaxers – such as P. T. Barnum , whose Fiji mermaid contributed to his wealth – often acquire monetary gain or fame through their fabrications, so the distinction between hoax and fraud is not necessarily clear.[10] Alex Boese, the creator of the Museum of Hoaxes , states that the only distinction between them is the reaction of the public, because a fraud can be classified as a hoax when its method of acquiring financial gain creates a broad public impact or captures the imagination of the masses.[11]
One of the earliest recorded media hoaxes is a fake almanac published by Jonathan Swift under the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff in 1708.[12] Swift predicted the death of John Partridge , one of the leading astrologers in England at that time, in the almanac and later issued an elegy on the day Partridge was supposed to have died. Partridge's reputation was damaged as a result and his astrological almanac was not published for the next six years.[12]
It is possible to perpetrate a hoax by making only true statements using unfamiliar wording or context, such as in the
political institutions
, often before elections.
A hoax differs from a magic trick or from fiction (books, film , theatre , radio , television , etc.) in that the audience is unaware of being deceived, whereas in watching a magician perform an illusion the audience expects to be tricked.
A hoax is often intended as a practical joke or to cause embarrassment, or to provoke social or political change by raising people's awareness of something. It can also emerge from a marketing or advertising purpose. For example, to market a romantic comedy film, a director staged a phony "incident" during a supposed wedding , which showed a bride and preacher getting knocked into a pool by a clumsy fall from a best man.[13] A resulting video clip of Chloe and Keith's Wedding was uploaded to YouTube and was viewed by over 30 million people and the couple was interviewed by numerous talk shows.[13] Viewers were deluded into thinking that it was an authentic clip of a real accident at a real wedding; but a story in USA Today in 2009 revealed it was a hoax.[13]
Great Moon Hoax
Governments sometimes spread false information to facilitate their objectives, such as going to war. These often come under the heading of black propaganda. There is often a mixture of outright hoax and suppression and management of information to give the desired impression. In wartime and times of international tension rumors abound, some of which may be deliberate hoaxes.
Examples of politics-related hoaxes:
Belgium is a country with a Flemish -speaking region and a French -speaking region. In 2006, French-speaking television channel RTBF interrupted programming with a spoof report claiming that the country had split in two and the royal family had fled.
On 13 March 2010, the
Psychologist Peter Hancock has identified six steps which characterise a truly successful hoax:[15]
Identify a constituency – a person or group of people who, for reasons such as piety or patriotism, or greed, will truly care about your creation.
Identify a particular dream which will make your hoax appeal to your constituency.
Create an appealing but "under-specified" hoax, with ambiguities
Have your creation discovered.
Find at least one champion who will actively support your hoax.
Make people care, either positively or negatively – the ambiguities encourage interest and debate
Types
Graphic showing differences between misinformation , disinformation , and hoax, presented for Wikimedia Research (2015)
Hoaxes vary widely in their processes of creation, propagation, and entrenchment over time. Examples include:
Academic hoaxes
:
Art-world hoaxes:
The "Bruno Hat" art hoax, arranged in
Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960: a 1998 art world hoax, by
William Boyd
Disumbrationism : a modern art hoax
Pierre Brassau : exposing art critics to "modern paintings" made by a chimpanzee
Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments
: a modernist poetry hoax
poet
Apocryphal claims that originate as a hoax gain widespread belief among members of a culture or organization, become entrenched as persons who believe it repeat it in good faith to others, and continue to command that belief after the hoax's originators have died or departed
Computer address book. Thus the e-mail "warning" is itself the "virus." Sometimes the hoax is more harmful, e.g., telling the recipient to seek a particular
file (usually in a
Microsoft Windows operating system ); if the file is found, the computer is deemed to be infected unless it is deleted. In reality the file is one required by the operating system for correct functioning of the computer.
Criminal Hoaxing, such as the case of John Samuel Humble, also known as Wearside Jack . Criminal hoaxing diverts time and money of police investigations with communications purporting to come from the actual criminal. Once caught, hoaxers are charged under criminal codes such as Perverting the course of justice
Factoids
Hoaxes formed by making minor or gradually increasing changes to a warning or other claims widely circulated for legitimate purposes
Hoax of exposure is a semi-comical or private sting operation . It usually encourages people to act foolishly or credulously by falling for patent nonsense that the hoaxer deliberately presents as reality. A related activity is culture jamming .
Hoax news
Hoaxes perpetrated by "scare tactics" appealing to the audience's subjectively rational belief that the expected cost of not believing the hoax (the cost if its assertions are true times the likelihood of their truth) outweighs the expected cost of believing the hoax (cost if false times likelihood of falsity), such as claims that a non-malicious but unfamiliar program on one's computer is malware
Hoaxes perpetrated on occasions when their initiation is considered socially appropriate, such as April Fools' Day
Humbugs
Internet hoaxes became more common after the start of social media . Some websites have been used to hoax millions of people on the Web[17]
Paleoanthropological hoaxes, anthropologists were taken in by the "Piltdown Man discovery" that was widely believed from 1913 to 1953
Religious hoaxes
UFO hoaxes
Urban legends and rumors with a probable conscious attempt to deceive[8]
Plandemic is a planned in advance pandemic
Hoax news
Hoax news (also referred to as fake news[18] [19] ) is a news report containing facts that are either inaccurate or false but which are presented as genuine.[20] A hoax news report conveys a half-truth used deliberately to mislead the public.[21]
Hoax may serve the goal of propaganda or disinformation – using social media to drive web traffic and amplify their effect.[22] [23] [24] Unlike news satire , fake news websites seek to mislead, rather than entertain, readers for financial or political gain.[25] [23]
Hoax news is usually released with the intention of misleading to injure an organization, individual, or person, and/or benefit financially or politically, sometimes utilizing sensationalist, deceptive, or simply invented headlines to maximize readership. Likewise, clickbait reports and articles from this operation gain advertisement revenue.
See also
Wikipedia:Hoax
– Wikipedia content guidelinePages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets , an article about hoaxes on Wikipedia.
Conspiracy theory – Attributing events to secret plots instead of more probable explanation
Counterfeit – Making a copy or imitation which is represented as the original
Deception – Causing someone to believe something that is not true
Email spoofing – Creating email spam or phishing messages with a forged sender identity or address
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds – 1841 book by Charles Mackay
Fake memoir – Type of literary forgery
Fake news website – Website that deliberately publishes hoaxes and disinformation
False document – Technique employed to create verisimilitude in a work of fiction
Fictitious entry – Deliberately incorrect entry in a reference work
Forgery – Process of making, adapting, or imitating objects to deceive
Half-truth – Deceptive statement
Impostor
– List of people acting under false identityPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
List of hoaxes
Literary forgery – Literary work which is either deliberately misattributed to a historical or invented author
Media manipulation – Techniques in which partisans create an image that favours their interests
Musical hoax – Intentionally misattributed music
Post-truth politics – Political culture where facts are considered irrelevant
Tall tale – Story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual
Virus hoax – Message warning of a non-existent computer virus
Website spoofing – Creating a website, as a hoax, with the intention of misleading readers
References
.
^ Rea, Christopher; Rusk, Bruce (2017). "Translators' Introduction". The Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection . New York: Columbia University Press. p. 1.
– via Google Books.
^ Nares, Robert (1822). A glossary; or, Collection of words ... which have been thought to require illustration, in the works of English authors . London: R. Triphook. p. 235.
^ a b "Merriam-Webster Dictionary: Hocus" . Merriam-Webster . 2010. Archived from the original on 1 May 2020. Retrieved 25 October 2010 .
Hocus Pocus
article for more detail.
^ .
^ .
.
.
^ Boese, Alex (2008). "What Is A Hoax?" . Archived from the original on 22 October 2013. Retrieved 25 October 2010 .
^ .
^ a b c Oldenburg, Ann (12 October 2009). "Director: 'Chloe and Keith's Wedding' video is a hoax" . USA Today . Archived from the original on 13 April 2010. Retrieved 5 March 2011 . But today, we can tell you: it's definitely a hoax. Chloe and Keith are actors named Josh Covitt and Charissa Wheeler. They're not married.
^ Watson, Ivan (10 March 2010). "Fake Russian invasion broadcast sparks Georgian panic" . CNN. Archived from the original on 20 December 2016. Retrieved 12 December 2016 .
.
^ "Leicester Galleries website on Bruno Hat , accessed 28th May 2011" . Leicestergalleries.com. Archived from the original on 7 August 2011. Retrieved 5 April 2012 .
^ "How serial hoaxers duped the Internet" . Washington Post . 24 September 2014. Archived from the original on 14 May 2016. Retrieved 24 September 2014 .
^ Bartolotta, Devin (9 December 2016), "Hillary Clinton Warns About Hoax News On Social Media" , WJZ-TV , archived from the original on 4 December 2019, retrieved 11 December 2016
^ Wemple, Erik (8 December 2016), "Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg says people don't want 'hoax' news. Really?" , The Washington Post , archived from the original on 27 February 2020, retrieved 11 December 2016
.
^ Weisburd, Andrew; Watts, Clint (6 August 2016), "Trolls for Trump – How Russia Dominates Your Twitter Feed to Promote Lies (And, Trump, Too)" , The Daily Beast , archived from the original on 31 May 2017, retrieved 24 November 2016
^ from the original on 28 June 2020, retrieved 19 November 2016
^ Sanders IV, Lewis (11 October 2016), " 'Divide Europe': European lawmakers warn of Russian propaganda" , Deutsche Welle , archived from the original on 25 March 2019, retrieved 24 November 2016
from the original on 28 April 2020. Retrieved 25 December 2016 .
Further reading
MacDougall, Curtis D. (1958) [1940] Hoaxes . [revised ed.] New York: Dover
Young, Kevin (2017). Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News . Graywolf Press. .
External links
Look up
hoax in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Hoaxes .