Luana Dos Santos Costa, Laura Johanson da Silva, Sabrina da Costa Machado Duarte, Thiago Privado da Silva, Carla Aparecida Arena Ventura, Ana Larissa Araujo Nogueira, Ítalo Rodolfo Silva
for nursing professionals, fake news is a complex phenomenon that presents form, content, and intentionality capable of projecting specific dynamics of production, propagation, and consumption of this information. The modus operandi of fake news finds gaps in social media control and algorithmic dynamics that favor its negative impact, including on science as the authority of discourse.
OBJECTIVES: to understand, from a complex perspective, the meanings of fake news in health and nursing as uncovered by nursing professionals.
METHODS: qualitative research, whose theoretical and methodological frameworks were, respectively, Complexity Theory and Grounded Theory. Participants were 25 nursing professionals from a public hospital and a family clinic in Rio de Janeiro. Semi-structured interviews were conducted between November 2021 and October 2023.
RESULTS: for nursing professionals, fake news is a complex phenomenon that presents form, content, and intentionality capable of projecting specific dynamics of production, propagation, and consumption of this information. The modus operandi of fake news finds gaps in social media control and algorithmic dynamics that favor its negative impact, including on science as the authority of discourse.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS: nursing professionals understand fake news as a phenomenon that transcends the duality between truth and falsehood, negatively impacting public health.