Raising awareness against fake news to protect democracy: the myth of Islamophobia in Trump's speech

Fake news is being disseminated rapidly and it is discussed constantly on social media through "likes", sharing and comments. Fake news undermined the contribution of media and gives space to powerful institution and specific parties to promote their policies as given. In this paper, I discuss that in order to understand in depth the fake news/disinformation, a phenomenon that threats democracy, each citizen should have the ability to connect the context, the words, the image and the extralinguistic features in order to "read" behind the lines and identify the intentions that are hidden. To support this claim, a specific excerpt from fake news by Donald Trump is being analysed thoroughly with the combination of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Social Semiotics (SS). From the analysis it is shown that not fake news merely, but rather elaborated myths are being constructed which attribute characteristics in social groups, in order to serve specific goals.