Top

Open Access 2024 | Open Access | Book

Truth Claims Across Media

Editors: Beate Schirrmacher, Nafiseh Mousavi

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Palgrave Studies in Intermediality

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Table of Contents

About this book

This book offers an intermedial approach to truthful communication. Bringing together a wide range of media types and interactions from a transmedial perspective, the volume maps out how truth claims are made in different contexts, and how different media promise to create a truthful perception of the social world.
The flexible communicative possibilities of digital technology have a significant impact on our perception of truth and truthfulness of communication. Bot accounts, deep fake videos, or AI technology draw attention to how reliable communication is destabilized and questioned. In this unstable climate, binaries such as true/false, authentic/fake and fiction/facts are difficult to apply. Instead, it is crucial to investigate how media products construct truthfulness in different ways. The volume brings together various media types and contexts such as press conferences, documentaries and mockumentaries, images in magazines and on social media, horror movies, biopics, and educational games and explores how truth claims, authenticity discourses, and knowledge communication are established and how they collide, merge, or are confused.
This is an open access book.

Frontmatter

PDF

Open Access

Chapter 1. Introduction: The Dynamics of Truthfulness and Media

Abstract

In this introduction to “Truth Claims Across Media,” we approach pressing questions related to facts and fakes, authority and authenticity, information and disinformation through an intermedial perspective. As digital technology allows us to blend different media and modes on an unprecedented scale, we need to delve deeper into how our media choices impact our perception of truthfulness. We present the concepts of truthfulness and truth claims, examining what kind of knowledge about the actual world can be derived from specific media products. The intermedial perspective serves as a lens through which we can elucidate how the interplay between facts, coherence, and audience engagement varies in different media contexts. From this perspective, it becomes possible to discuss how media choices influence knowledge production and relate to the evolving demands for authenticity and witnessing in today’s shifting media landscape.

Beate Schirrmacher, Nafiseh Mousavi

PDF View full text

Factual Evidence and Coherence in Knowledge Communication

Frontmatter

Open Access

Chapter 2. A Story Too Good to Be True: The Manipulation of Truth Claims in Faked News

Abstract

In 2018, former German star reporter Claas Relotius admitted that he manipulated most of his prize-winning feature stories. Why did no one suspect for a long time that his stories were a bit too good to be true? Instead of trying to differentiate facts from fiction, this article explores how facts and narrative interact in journalism. Drawing on Lars Elleström’s approach to how truthfulness in communication is based on indexicality (Semiotica 225, 423–446, 2018), the analysis looks for indexical traces of journalistic work in two news features published in Der Spiegel, one by Alexander Osang (Der Spiegel 37, 50–54, 2018) and the manipulated feature, “The story of Ahmed and Alin” by Claas Relotius (Der Spiegel 28, 127–34, 2016). The analysis explores how observed and verifiable details interact with elements of internal and external coherence. In Osang’s feature, the different indexical relationships are closely connected yet clearly separated. In Relotius’s manipulated feature, the different indexical relationships are not easily identified, and elements of coherence point towards each other instead of being grounded in observed and verifiable detail. This kind of analysis makes it possible to start to describe in more detail how a factual narrative is truthfully or only insufficiently grounded in actual events.

Beate Schirrmacher

PDF View full text

Open Access

Chapter 3. The Montage of the National Past: Polish Right-Wing Illustrated Press and the Abuse of History

Abstract

The study analyzes covers of contemporary Polish right-wing magazines and shows that many of them use historical images for political purposes. Referring to the terminology of Antoon de Baets, the author argues that the images on the covers “abuse history,” i.e., use history in an intentionally deceptive way. The main technique of abusing history is montage. Historical motifs are combined with each other either on particular covers or between them. Although originally montage was widely used as means of avant-garde and leftist art, it is now a common method of designing conservative and right-wing imagery. Drawing on the premises of the pictorial turn, the author further claims that the covers shape social and political realities. They are not mere illustrations but powerful actors of the public discourse that promote a view on history in which whole nations are either heroes or traitors, good or bad. Therefore, they contribute to the simplified and even falsified perspective on the past.

Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska

PDF View full text

Open Access

Chapter 4. Trustworthiness in the Swedish Strategies for Covid-19 in Recorded Press Conferences from the Public Health Agency of Sweden

Abstract

This article investigates structural patterns of eight recorded press conferences on Covid-19, and how the Public Health Agency of Sweden (PHA) builds trust in its information. The analysis draws on Wodak’s model, using the theoretical and methodological concepts discourse, texts, genres, situatedness, and discourse strand. The press conferences are regularly scheduled, always with the same structure. PHA uses a range of multimodal features with which they interact orally. Tension often arises in the dialogue between PHA and journalists wanting to know about death numbers, the spread of infection, and how citizens should act to stay healthy. Two discourse strands are identified: death numbers and face masks. PHA handles these discourse strands in slightly different ways. Journalists ask about the relatively high Swedish death numbers, which PHA does not deny, but is reluctant to talk about. PHA does not want to acknowledge the usefulness of face masks, saying that other measures are more effective. Both discourse strands pose potential threats to PHA’s trustworthiness. Journalists question why PHA’s death statistics show lower figures than those of other authorities, and they ask about the scientific basis for its face mask strategy, pointing to countries with different approaches.

Gunilla Byrman, Asbjørg Westum

PDF View full text

Personal Quests for Empirical Truth: Testimony and Media Hybridity

Frontmatter

Open Access

Chapter 5. Unveiling Truth and Truthfulness in the Graphic Memoir Heimat

Abstract

Heimat: A German Family Album is a book by author and illustrator Nora Krug, named Best Book of 2018 by The Guardian and The New York Times’ critics. It is a collection of family photos combined with drawings, as well as photographic reproductions of objects and historical documents—such as notebooks, questionnaires, police reports, and letters. The narrative follows Krug’s quest to find out whether any of her relatives took part in the Nazi Party or professed any political views during the regime. In this text, I examine how the medial configurations of graphic memoirs in general, and of Heimat in particular, can communicate truthfulness. Relying on Lars Elleström’s framework, I first discuss the notion of truthfulness in mediated communication. Next, I examine the established tradition in graphic memoirs of using media representation, transmediation, and associated media products in order to claim truthfulness, so that readers accept them as valid demonstrations of a factual narrative. Then I present the case of Heimat, indicating how it sometimes differs from this convention. Finally, I offer a possible explanation for this deviation from the traditional use of media representation in graphic memoirs to convey truthfulness.

Camila Augusta P. de Figueiredo

PDF View full text

Open Access

Chapter 6. Cameras, Pencils, Traumas: Drawn Images in and as Documentary Practice

Abstract

Night and Fog in Kurdistan, a documentary film in its last stages of post-production at the time this chapter is being written, documents six years in the life of seven teenage girls who survived the ISIS genocide of Yazidis in 2014. Night and Fog in Kurdistan is a hybrid documentary in its way of combining different types of images, various perspectives, and different approaches to documentary filmmaking. In this film, the photographic image is once in a while interrupted and joined by drawings that serve different functions: They illustrate what is being narrated, portray what has not been captured by any media, or reproduce the archival photographic images. Analysing these functions as situated in the broader frame of different media relations, the article aims to investigate the affordances of drawing for documentation, especially in the case of traumatic experiences and in interaction with other modes of representation. The article is based on an analysis of the final cut of the film plus different versions of the drawings as well as two in-depth conversations with the director and her team.

Nafiseh Mousavi

PDF View full text

Fact and Fake across Media Types

Frontmatter

Open Access

Chapter 7. Fictionality as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Mockumentary Films: The Interplay of Fictionality and Factuality in C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

Abstract

How can a mockumentary film like Kevin Willmott’s C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America argue effectively and authenticate its important message about the presence of racism and discrimination in contemporary American society with a narrative that is obviously fictional? Doesn’t this method of presenting an alternative history of the nation create mistrust and suspicion in the audience, instead of giving them profound insight into the actual states of things? The ambiguity of such mockumentaries stems from the simultaneous application of two major types of rhetorical frames: They always utilize some style or variant of the documentary genre (Juhasz et al., F Is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2006, 7) (evoking a factual discourse), but—to a differing degree—also undermining, suspending, or putting it between quotation marks (evoking a fictional discourse). In this paper, I want to argue that with the innovative utilization of fictionality and factuality as communicational tools and rhetorical resources, a politically charged fake documentary such as Willmott’s film can explore problematic dimensions of social reality and shed light on its subject matter from a novel perspective.

Tamás Csönge

PDF View full text

Open Access

Chapter 8. Clemens J. Setz on Bursting the Reader’s Reality Bubble

Abstract

In our article, we explore implications that the indistinguishability of factuality and fictionality in literary works may have on an author’s credibility and their role as an authoritative figure. We do this by looking at one question and one answer in the fictional author interview in Bot – Gespräch ohne Autor (2018) by the Austrian author Clemens J. Setz. Currently, Setz is one of the most distinguished writers in the German-speaking literary scene, known for his versatile literary work and authorial staging practices. Bot plays with the public perception of the author persona Setz and stages an imitation game, also known as the Turing Test. Thus, it affects the perception of truth claims traditionally expected in author interviews. To illustrate, we refer to theoretical approaches to forms and functions of author interviews concerning authorship in the context of the so-called culture of presence and show how Bot reveals a playful reflection on the possibilities, limits, and dangers embedded in the perceived truthfulness within the framework of fiction and authorship, particularly in Setz’s.

Nataša Muratova, Anna Obererlacher

PDF View full text

Open Access

Chapter 9. “An Occasionally True Story”: Biofiction, Authenticity and Fictionality in The Great (2020)

Abstract

Contemporary visual and literary culture has seen a proliferation of quasi-biographical texts that blur the lines between fact and fiction and often imply that by subverting or questioning the dominant portrayal of a given historical figure they offer a “true” version that had hitherto been suppressed. These so called “biofictions” (e.g. Netflix series The Crown, or Baz Luhrman’s feature film Elvis) are hybrids of biography and pure conjecture, but despite their essentially fictitious nature, they make claims to authenticity, often implying that the sensationalised versions of the famous lives are the “authentic” ones.

This chapter seeks to analyse the recent critically acclaimed television series The Great (season 1: 2020, season 2: 2022), created by Tony McNamara, starring Elle Fanning as Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, against the backdrop of recent trends in biofiction and costume drama. In particular, the chapter focuses on the interplay between the conventions of historical biofiction and biopic (and in particular of the “queen pic”—a biographical film about a female royal) and the series’ progressive and presentist agenda, and it aims to position the case study of The Great within the broader discussion of attitudes towards the past in modern popular culture.

Anna Gutowska

PDF View full text

Open Access

Chapter 10. Impure Realism, Pure Eventness, and Horror Cinema in the Post-truth Era: A Case Study of One Cut of the Dead

Abstract

Through the case study of One Cut of the Dead—a 2017 zombie-comedy about how a film crew stage a zombie-film-within-a-zombie-film for live broadcast—this article examines contemporary media’s appropriation of the meta- or hyper-realism to represent “impure monsters” in the guise of the uncanny return of the repressed. By comparison, by moving away from the anthropomorphic realism that mainstreams zombie narratives as “alternative facts,” One Cut of the Dead interrupts the production of post-truth and liberates its characters from the “anthropological machine” responsible for people’s anxiety about being impure. In this light, the article intends, by providing an interpretation of how subjectivities can be generated within the apocalyptic experience of filmmaking/filmviewing, to bring about a reconsideration of the uncanny realism as a radical openness towards zombie events’ impact. This openness requires us not to reduce the singularity of the event to preexisting means of understanding. Rather than assume that the fictional genre has become either escapist fantasy or doomsday visions, I suggest instead that today’s horror cinema has increasingly highlighted tensions between “eventness” and the post-truth illusory mechanism.

Yeqi Zhu

PDF View full text

Interaction, Trust, and Truthfulness on Social Media

Frontmatter

Open Access

Chapter 11. Developing Misinformation Immunity in a Post-Truth World: Human Computer Interaction for Data Literacy

Abstract

The Networked Society has brought about opportunities, such as citizens’ journalism, as well as challenges, such as the proliferation of media distortions. To keep up which such a sheer amount of (mis)information, citizens need to develop critical media literacy. We believe that, even though not enough to guarantee a gatekeeping process, human-computer interaction can help users develop epistemic vigilance. To this sake, we present the Fake News Immunity chatbot, designed to teach users how to recognize misinformation leveraging Fallacy Theory. Fallacies, arguments which seem valid but are not, constitute privileged viewpoints for the identification of misinformation. We then evaluate the results of the chatbot as an educational tool through a gamification experience with two cohorts of students and discuss achieved learning outcomes as well as recommendations for future improvement.

Elena Musi, Kay L. O’Halloran, Elinor Carmi, Simeon Yates

PDF View full text

Open Access

Chapter 12. When the Post-Truth Devil Hides in the Details: A Digital Ethnography of Virtual Anti-Vaccination Groups in Lithuania

Abstract

The main aim of this article is to understand how anti-vaccination communities on social media platforms can shape and rationalise their perception of truth, by using a theoretical lens of post-truth studies, and what contextual features frame the formulation of vaccine-related truth statements in post-Soviet contexts. This article explores two of the largest anti-vaccination Facebook groups in Lithuania. An attempt is made to get closer to the participants’ worldview by gathering data using a digital ethnography inspired approach, and then analysing the data with text-based methods. Content analysis was used to find the main themes and to merge them with wider analytical categories, which allows the ongoing process in the wider theoretical context to be investigated. Afterwards, discourse analysis was performed because the overall course of the research called for re-evaluation of the topic and methods from multiple angles. During the research, four analytical categories were outlined: crisis of trust, competing with science, populism, and an anti-public discourse. The Lithuanian case reveals that the proliferation of these narratives often originates in and is affected by contextual realities. It is argued that they must be considered when analysing occurrences of communities founded on alternative epistemologies.

Augustė Dementavičienė, Fausta Mikutaitė, Aivaras Žukauskas

PDF View full text

Open Access

Chapter 13. Towards a Grammar of Manipulated Photographs: The Social Semiotics of Digital Photo Manipulation

Abstract

This article explores the visual grammatical implications of contemporary digital photo manipulation. The rapid and broad distribution of photographs via social media is leading to the conventionalisation of new social practices in photography (Johannessen & Boeriis, Visual Communication 20, 527–551, 2021), including the widespread use of image filters and other types of image manipulation. The smartphone camera has become a constantly available augmentation of our sensory motor apparatus and of our social environment (Blaagaard, Visual Communication 12, 359–374, 2013; Frosh, International Journal of Communication 9, 1607–1628, 2015; Han et al., 2017) and, consequently, manipulated photography is becoming an almost dialogical practice of expressing thoughts and emotions in real-time among individuals on a potentially very large scale (Boeriis, Discourse, Context & Media 41, 28–40, 2021).

From a point of departure in multimodal social semiotics (Hodge & Kress, 1988; Kress & van Leeuwen, Multimodal discourse: The modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. Hodder Arnold, 2001), this article explores how different visual meaning-making resources are involved in manipulating digital photographs. Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar (2020) serves as a framework for the analysis and discussion of the options available for photo manipulation in digital software, both specialised for social media (e.g. Instagram or FaceApp) and for professional photography (e.g. Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom). Thus, the article unfolds the meaning-making of photo manipulations by relating different effects to the grammatical categories affected by different adjustments.

Morten Boeriis

PDF View full text

Backmatter

PDF

Title: Truth Claims Across Media
Editors: Beate Schirrmacher
Nafiseh Mousavi
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-031-42064-1
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-42063-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42064-1