Sociology

Jargon

Slang

Philosophy

Political science

Psychology

Disinformation

Mainstream

Linguistics

Social media

Persuasion

Media studies

Social psychology

Journalism Practice

Information disorder involves wide-ranging content that challenges democratic rules and social harmony. Pseudo-media that relies on conspiracy theories and misleading versions of the social reality contribute to feeding the disinformation ecosystem by reinforcing biased messages with expressive patterns and polarising practices. This article focuses on the content published (N = 1,396) by seven far-right wing Spanish pseudo-media. Based on qualitative and quantitative methods, it analyses headlines, types of text and sources, as well as the distortion strategies of journalistic conventions. Results show that the emotional component is expressed by means of polarised headlines that rely on clickbait to gain attention and build a particular jargon, exacerbated by disinformation and populist practices. The absolute dependence of conspicuous headlines is evidenced by the limited resources of pseudo-media, whose production lies in a mix of opinion text and the processing of online content. Plagiarism from mainstream—mainly conservative—media, social networks and website siblings fuel these outlets that play the role of the ambiguity, mimicking journalistic conventions and mocking them by means of disinformation practices, with a particular focus on reframing social issues, progressive policies and measures to manage the pandemic.

Pseudo-Media Disinformation Patterns: Polarised Discourse, Clickbait and Twisted Journalistic Mimicry