What makes disinformation so convincing from a discourse analytic perspective: The art of mimicry and legitimation of falsehood

This paper investigates legitimation strategies in Lithuanian disinformation texts aiming to determine how they are used to legitimize false information to make it look credible.This study examines the distribution of legitimation strategies, their forms and contents in disinformation texts and mainstream media.Its primary focus is on how these strategies in fake news help to mimic factual texts and the informative style characteristic of them.The approach of critical discourse analysis serves as the main analytical framework, which gives a broader outlook to the linguistic mechanisms that are at work when framing the COVID-19 pandemic.Based on the results, it is argued that when developing media literacy skills, it is necessary to give attention not only to some distinct features of disinformation but also its intended imitation of "serious" genres.