Church, religion and post-truth. The analysis of fact-checking reports

Abstract

The article aims to analyze the image of religion and the Roman Catholic Church that emerges from the reports of the Polish fact-checking organization Demagog. The reports and analyses are treated as “new stories” that find their way into the media discourse following fake news. The study of untruths, half-truths, and fictions related to religion provides an insight into how the position and meaning of religion and the Roman Catholic Church are negotiated in contemporary Polish society. The analysis presents the main patterns of creating fake news related to religion, in which the intentions of the creators, methods of creating disinformation, ways of exposing fake news, and topics covered were combined in different configurations.