Thinking with Digital Images in the Post-Truth Era: A Method in Critical Media Literacy

Nataša Lacković

doi:10.1007/s42438-019-00099-y

Abstract

This article introduces a new method to support critical media literacy, learning and research in higher education. It acts as a response to an unprecedented profusion of visual information across digital media that contributes to the contemporary post-truth era, marked by fake news and uncritical consumption of the media. Whereas much has been written about the reasons behind and the character of the post-truth, less space has been dedicated to how educators could counteract the uncritical consumption of images from the perspective of semiotics. This article adopts a unique semiotic approach to address the stated gap. It discusses in depth the meaning making of pictures, digital photographs and material objects that photographs can embody. It does so by focusing on three aspects of a pictorial sign: (1) the materiality of its representation and representational elements, (2) its object (what the sign refers to) and (3) its descriptive interpretations. These three aspects inform the signification analysis within the proposed production-signification-consumption (PSC) method, exemplified with digital photographs. Understanding and analysing images via the PSC method draw attention to how humans create, interpret, (re)use, consume and respond to online and offline communication signs. The method can contribute to the development of critical media literacy as an engagement with postdigital semiotics, much needed in an age of global ecological and social crises, uncertainty and fast consumption of digital content.

Highlights

I've been looking so long at these pictures of you That I almost believe that they're real I've been living so long with my pictures of you That I almost believe that the pictures are All I can feel
It offers a novel analytical framework that can be implemented in the curriculum and research. This is needed to address the current state of human-media interaction, as we live in a world ‘of hyper-visuality, in a world of remediation and cross-mediation in which experience of content both appears in multiple forms and migrates from one form to another’ (Bolter 2001; Peters, Besley, Jandrić and Bajić 2016: 2)
If digital communication is at the core of present-day communication and education, what is the key unit of digital communication? Peirce’s semiotics offers an encompassing answer that includes language and narrative but does not adopt a logocentric approach for all media and modalities, such as images

Summary

Introduction

I've been looking so long at these pictures of you That I almost believe that they're real I've been living so long with my pictures of you That I almost believe that the pictures are All I can feel. It offers a novel analytical framework that can be implemented in the curriculum and research This is needed to address the current state of human-media interaction, as we live in a world ‘of hyper-visuality, in a world of remediation and cross-mediation in which experience of content both appears in multiple forms and migrates from one form to another’ (Bolter 2001; Peters, Besley, Jandrić and Bajić 2016: 2). This article does not aim to analyse or theorize the post-truth era per se or delve into nuances of lies and fake news associated with it (see MacKenzie and Bhatt 2020a, b) It discusses the truth and digital photographs’ connection to abstract and concrete concepts from a semiotic perspective. In a world where a vast number of learners engage with overwhelming pictorial content daily, a turn to examining and understanding digital communication mediated by pictures can be beneficial for contemporary higher education

A Semiotic View on Communication

In his essay ‘This is not a pipe’

Conclusion