A theoretical-practical framework is proposed for an understanding of fake news stories from an interdisciplinary, ecological and posthumanist perspective. Key elements of three systemic approaches to meaning are integrated that allow for a symmetrical account of human and non-human agencies in fake news as a phenomenon. The findings are descriptions of: fake news as systemic material-semiotic activity that emerges from algorithmic capture of human emotion and social-discursive degrees of freedom; how pre-conscious/emotional triggers can be hacked by informational patterns in fake news pieces; an “ontological syntax” of truthiness and falseness across institutional agencies in fake-news activity.