The audience receives a continuous stream of information from different sources every minute in the era of informational noise. It becomes almost impossible to distinguish verified facts from deliberate lies, which are aimed at manipulating public opinion and the attitudes of the masses. Fakes both in the media and in social networks are becoming less and less noticeable, skillfully disguised as journalistic content. Such materials are created according to all the canons of the genre (use of the «inverted pyramid» principle, structural elements) and, from a technical point of view, are «classic» news reports. However, on a semantic basis, they contain unreliable, sometimes subjective information, which leads the audience to incorrect conclusions and false ideas about some phenomenon of reality. They are capable of causing panic and destructive attitudes in society, deliberately misleading citizens to achieve their own goals. The article is devoted to determining the place of fakes in the modern media space, considering them as a real information threat of the 21st century. In particular, a classification of modern fakes is given, possible goals for creating such content are studied, ways to combat fake messages at the legislative level and at the level of media education are highlighted. The main research methods were the method of description, content analysis, classification method, and generalization method. The main source of the study was the War on Fake Telegram channel dedicated to exposing false facts in the media space. An analysis of the publications of this Telegram channel made it possible to identify the most common types of fake messages, as well as the relevant tools used to create such content.
fake; media; Telegram; media content; fake news; media space; media safety; media literacy.