Central European Journal of Communication

ABSTRACT: The paper presents the celebrity image of Marian Kočner as it was presented by selected disinformation media while informed about the murder of journalist J. Kuciak and his fiancée M. Kušnírová. We pointed out that the „celebritisation” of M. Kočner in the Slovak society has been contributed to, among others, by disinformation media, which did so by means of 1) narratives related to the person of M. Kočner and 2) the tonality of published texts (positive, negative, neutral). Through a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 600 articles from five disinformation media sources, the study identifies six prevalent narratives depicting Kočner with predominantly neutral tonalities. Notably, these neutral depictions persisted long after mainstream media began portraying Kočner negatively. This study aims to shed light on the phenomenon of contribution to the image formation of celebrities through disinformation media, even in cases where the celebrity is a negative public persona.

Full text: https://journals.ptks.pl/cejc/article/view/614/pdf