Content Optimization in Political Communication: Lessons from the Fake News Production Sites in Veles, Macedonia

In this paper we explore internet marketing and fake news production as new media content regimes based on audience profiling. We undertook a field study of the content enterprises from Veles Macedonia and understood the organic mechanics of fake news production. The deep-seated problem that we identified was the instrumentalisation of content for political and material ends. Basically, the content producers give the audiences exactly what they want to hear, irrespective of truth. This kind of content enterprise is not likely to disappear, but to thrive, because it is lucrative. The commodity value of fake news is higher than the public service value of journalistic content. These optimization tactics are widely used on the Internet; we believe that the recent success of the populist AUR Party in Romania is a recent illustration of the same practice.