6:54 a.m.
Dear all,
Welcome to next week’s IMS seminar, where we will discuss Beate Schirrmacher’s article
draft A Story Too Good to Be True: Manipulation of Truth Claims in Faked News. Since the
article draft is still in its early stages, it will not be circulated widely via this
mail, but those who want to attend the seminar can obtain the article draft by replying to
this mail.
Note that Nafiseh Mousavi’s seminar originally scheduled next week has been moved to
December.
Abstract:
In 2018, former German star reporter Claas Relotius had to admit that he manipulated most
of his prize-winning feature stories. So why did no one for a long time suspect that his
stories were a bit too good to be true? Instead of trying to tell facts from fiction, the
article explores how facts and narrative interact in the factual narratives of news.
Drawing on Lars Elleström’s approach to how truthfulness in communication is based on
indexicality (2018) the analysis looks for indexical traces of journalistic work in two
features published in Der Spiegel: “Karam’s first day at school” by Alexander Osang (2018)
and the manipulated feature “The story of Ahmed and Alin” by Claas Relotius (2016). The
analysis explores how observed and verifiable details interact with elements of internal
and external coherence. In Osang’s feature, the different indexical relations are closely
connected yet clearly separated. Main events are grounded in several indexical relations.
In Relotius’ manipulated feature, the different indexical relations 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 more in detail how a factual narrative is truthfully or only deficiently grounded
in actual events.
It is possible to attend the seminar both from Dacke in Växjö and via zoom:
https://lnu-se.zoom.us/j/940933326
The seminar is on the 20 Oct. from 10.15-12.00 CEST.
Best wishes,
Signe – on behalf of IMS
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IMS website:
https://lnu.se/en/research/searchresearch/linnaeus-university-centre-for-in…
Signe Kjaer Jensen / PhD
Senior Lecturer, Department of Film and Literature
Linnæus University
Department of Film and Literature
351 95 Växjö
Sweden
https://lnu.se/personal/signe.kjaerjensen/
signe.kjaerjensen at lnu.se<mailto:signe.kjaerjensen at lnu.se>