The paradoxical construction of reality

Abstract

: The paradoxical construction of reality — Strange facts published in the newspapers of reference, herein called ‘news of the fantastic’, make up the corpus of this research project. Strangeness is presented as a news value exploited in journalism according to its degree of fantasticality. Starting from the premise that the sender-recipient relationship is a dynamic process of co-creation of meanings, the author observes the language games and the cons- truction of meaning in the communicative act triggered by journalistic statements. The study reveals that the editors reassert their authority through the aesthetics of the fantastic and that the strategy of seduction consists of presenting ‘strange phenomena’ occurring in ‘unreal’ worlds and then explaining or ironizing them, thereby rescuing the reader from this universe and returning him to the safety and order of the ‘real world’.