Notions Of Authenticity Research Articles

Attribution and Obfuscation of Neural Text Authorship: A Data Mining Perspective

Two interlocking research questions of growing interest and importance in privacy research are Authorship Attribution (AA) and Authorship Obfuscation (AO). Given an artifact, especially a text t in question, an AA solution aims to accurately attribute t to its true author out of many candidate authors while an AO solution aims to modify t to hide its true authorship. Traditionally, the notion of authorship and its accompanying privacy concern is only toward human authors. However, in recent years, due to the explosive advancements in Neural Text Generation (NTG) techniques in NLP, capable of synthesizing human-quality openended texts (so-called "neural texts"), one has to now consider authorships by humans, machines, or their combination. Due to the implications and potential threats of neural texts when used maliciously, it has become critical to understand the limitations of traditional AA/AO solutions and develop novel AA/AO solutions in dealing with neural texts. In this survey, therefore, we make a comprehensive review of recent literature on the attribution and obfuscation of neural text authorship from a Data Mining perspective, and share our view on their limitations and promising research directions.

Settling land, unsettling people: Living with and contesting land, social change and grand schemes in rural central Jordan

ABSTRACT In this article I consider how changing legal and social conceptions of land usage and ownership in rural central Jordan offer ethnographic purchase on broad questions of historical change and political economy. Yet equally, I show how this topic shows the limitations of such broad questions, and how reducing local processes into them can obscure historically contingent but enduring practices and patterns of land relations. I consider how reforms stemming from different visions of history and of modernity, in the face of colonial, post-colonial and neoliberal processes of land registration and settlement, and of mass-migration and urban expansion, have combined and clashed, leaving partially fulfilled grand projects and palimpsest-like marks on local political economy, but also how they have been adapted, contested, resisted, and reproduced by rural Jordanians. I particularly consider how the imposition of neoliberal land reforms since the 1980s has coincided with the rise of the hijjah; the trade and sale of semi-legal deeds of protection and cessation over tracts of tribal land, left in an ambiguous state of registration by successive modernist state-building schemes. This has enabled a kind of commoditization to emerge, but one which runs against the grain of official thinking on land tenure, and which partakes instead in very different notions of authority, legitimacy and sovereignty.

Aristotelian themes in critical ethical naturalism

Abstract Key features of critical ethical naturalism (CEN) can be more fully appreciated by considering them in relation to themes in Aristotle’s ethics and politics. Drawing on Aristotle’s writings, four central features of CEN are explored. The first aspect of CEN considered concerns its recognition that we are community beings that are mutually constituted and subject to co-development, Aristotle’s discussion of character friendship and our essentially political nature supports a fuller appreciation of what this involves and implies. A second aspect of CEN examined relates to the use of the term ‘eudaimonia’ to refer to a life of a human fulfilled (a life of flourishing)—Aristotle’s own use of the term is considered and shown to be valuable in clarifying its deployment in CEN. The third feature of CEN discussed concerns the extent to which all humans are critical ethical naturalists due to their inherent dispositions to care. Aristotle is seen as supporting the view that we have an inbuilt tendency to care but is shown to also maintain that humans, when rational, choose to endorse their caring (rather than other) tendencies not simply because they are natural but because they are good. These insights enable a better appreciation of CEN’s claims by clarifying the connections between our rational faculties and our innate tendencies to care for others. Finally, the recognition in CEN of the vulnerabilities of humans stemming from their communal nature and the analysis of ways in which certain configurations of social relations weaken our tendencies to care and form obstacles in the path to a good society are shown to echo important reservations Aristotle had about certain forms of association. Aristotle’s notion of organicity in the development of social arrangements is shown to provide useful clarifications regarding the notion of authenticity (and its connections with human flourishing) as the latter is deployed in CEN.

Nationalization of Spatiotemporal Artifacts: National Chronotope, Authenticity, and Local Colors in Danish TV Dramas

This article investigates the conceptualization of spatiality and temporality in television drama series in the age of extensive digital media consumption by focusing on Turkish audiences’ reception of Danish TV dramas. Based on the empirical data collected through extended fieldwork in Turkey, and relying on Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope (spacetime), I analyze how research participants negotiate socio-geographical features, as well as both spatial and temporal textual representations signifying Danish culture and society by delineating “authenticity” and “local color” to distinct spatiotemporal cues in Danish TV drama series. This study reveals that by critically articulating notions of authenticity and local color as distinguishing markers of a particular spacetime, Turkish audiences employ these concepts as strategies to define “national chronotope” which provides a middle ground for reconciliation between the facticity of the geographical place and mediated images of space, as well as factuality of time and local temporalities on screen.

AUTHENTICITY AND THE POOR IMAGE IN THE AGE OF DEEP LEARNING

Deep learning techniques are increasingly used to automate categorization and identification tasks for large datasets of digital photographs. For rasterized images formats, such as JPEGs, GIFs, and PNGs, the analysis happens on the level of individual pixels. Given this, digital images used in deep learning applications are typically restricted to relatively low-resolution formats to conform to the standards of popular pre-trained neural networks. Using Hito Steyerl’s conception of the ‘poor image’ as a theoretical frame, this article investigates the use of these relatively low-resolution images in automated analysis, exploring the ways in which they may be deemed preferable to higher-resolution images for deep learning applications. The poor image is rich in value in this context, as it limits the undesirable ‘noise’ of too much detail. In considering the case of automated art authentication, this article argues that a notion of authenticity is beginning to emerge that raises questions around Walter Benjamin’s often-cited definition in relation to mass image culture. Copies or reproductions are now forming the basis for a new model of authenticity, which exists latently in the formal properties of a digital image.

“For explorers by explorers”

The Norwegian company Hurtigruten operates ships cruising along the Norwegian coast and has played an important role in tourism for over a century. This article provides a multimodal discourse analysis of the website advertising Hurtigruten’s most popular journey, drawing on a critical tourism studies approach. It aims to answer the question as to what central themes emerge in tourism discourse on Norway, targeted at an international audience. Central characteristics of tourism discourse (Dann 1996), i.e., strangerhood, conflict, authenticity, and playfulness, are shown to be crucial in the analysed material. The paper discusses the notion of authenticity as a performative strategy in the promotion of Norwegian cruise tourism. One central aim of this paper is finding out what and how the notion of “authentically Norwegian” is advertised. The results imply that these topics, and especially the notion of authenticity, are aligned with general tourism imaginaries, which are similar globally.
 
 
 
 

Editorial

This article sets out the scope for the Journal of Visual Political Communication, the growing body of research in this field and introduces some of the key debates which are discussed by the essays in this special relaunch edition. The brief discussion firstly introduces power and symbolism, and who is represented and empowered through visual political communication. Secondly, the role of visuals in diplomacy and international relations. Thirdly, how visuals give a sense of proximity and closeness, exploring the role of photojournalists. Fourthly, the use of visuals for strategic impression management by political actors and the notion of authenticity. Fifthly, the role that user-generated visuals play within political communication. And, sixthly, the debates around computer-assisted, automated and artificial intelligence as tools for the analysis of visuals. The article gives insights into some of the important strands of research, debates which the journal seeks to explore.

Specificity, Authenticity, and Inseparability: Assessing Integrated Oral Skills for Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers

Because the stakes are so high when assessing the oral language skills of pilots and air traffic controllers, they deserve to be tested in the use of the most specific language features of aviation English and in the most authentic context of their professions. In this talk I will discuss the problem of defining language specificity for professional purposes, the problem of reproducing authentic contexts in assessments, and the problem of the inseparability of language knowledge and professional background knowledge. In terms of specificity, I will talk about “Codes of Relevance,” which relate language use to specific professional contexts. The notion of authenticity is paramount since, unless pilot and ATC test takers can relate to the professional context in a realistic manner, then the judgments we make concerning their language abilities may not be valid. Finally, I will discuss the consequences of the notion that language knowledge and professional background knowledge are theoretically and practically inseparable.

Authenticity of cultural heritage vis-à-vis heritage reproducibility and intangibility: from conservation philosophy to practice

ABSTRACT This article states that the philosophical nature/ambiguity/controversy of the issue of authenticity undermines its usefulness as a tool in conservation practice. The main drawback is the inability to objectively define the notion of authenticity. In conservation philosophy, the meaning of authenticity relativizes along with the widespread consent to the reproducibility of cultural heritage, whereas the recognition of its intangibility negates the sense of authenticity. In the World Heritage (WH) policy and practice, the uselessness/counterproductivity of authenticity as a necessary requirement is visible in the inconsistency of this system in the treatment of the commonly realized reproducibility of cultural heritage, and in relation to heritage with a prevailing intangibility, which is illustrated by the example of Gdańsk as a potential WH site. Although the article provides many arguments for departing from the concept of authenticity in the WH system, authenticity introduces the socially beneficial element of discretion (it cannot be considered binarily), as it forces a discussion that raises cultural awareness in an increasingly homogenized world. Finally, to reduce some inconsistencies in the WH system, this paper recommends restoring autonomy to criterion (vi) in the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention.

The Asceticism of Transparency: A Religious and Racial Genealogy of Heidegger’s Notion of Authenticity

ABSTRACT This article interprets Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time with two objectives. First, it argues that, for Heidegger, temporality and affectivity implicate each other and that this coupling might be read as a critique of abstract modern notions of time. Second, it claims that the affectivity and temporality that characterize the ideal of “authentic existence” in Being and Time correspond to a white Protestant ideal of subjectivity. While the article looks to highlight the usefulness of Heidegger’s comprehension of temporality/affectivity, it also warns the reader against upholding “authenticity” as a neutral ideal of liberated existence. Ultimately, the article delineates the religious and racial genealogy that, affectively and temporally, characterizes “authenticity.” By articulating the Protestant eschatological experience that undergirds this model of subjectivity and the racialized connotations of “transparency,” the article re-interprets “authenticity” as an ascetic ideal defined by an unending pursuit of becoming-transparent via the re-appropriation of oneself and the world.

The Forging of One’s Self: Inauthentic Signatures and the Privacy of Handwriting

The article examines the ambiguous relationship between the handwritten signature and privacy. Read as an expression of individuality, the signature serves as a means of (public) representation and documentation; at the same time, its appearance is said to be connected to a person’s character and their specific manners that are developed and acted upon most freely in private. Based on the examples of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s autograph collection and Thomas Mann’s designs for the signatures of two characters from his novel Die Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull, this article explores inauthentic signatures—signatures displaying a name other than the signatory’s—as a practice of performing individuality through writing. It concludes that the relationship between individuality and handwriting is not dependent on notions of authenticity, but instead is established through diverse practices involving (among others) posing and imitation. Thus, privacy not only provides a space for the enactment of “authentic” self-expression, but also for the exploration of personality through playful and imaginative practices.

The Van Gogh Experience

This experimental writing both embodies and interrogates how creative work that is re-mixed and re-presented also creates multivalent “experiences.” A menagerie of quotations performs both a narrative-of-thinking and open-ended discursive potential. The work asks: Can this manuscript both analyze and perform a subversion, problematizing notions of authenticity, authorship, ownership, production, distribution, reception, and meaning? Can immersion in fragmented, derivative writing produce an affective experience in line with a contemporary post-pandemic and technologically- and social-media-immersive “structure of feeling”? The excerpts include discussions of Vincent Van Gogh’s work recently presented as popular “immersive experiences”; discourse on the commodification, reproduction, and authenticity of art; views on artistic presentation in a pandemic- and technology-infused era; and quotations concerning (and drawn from work in) deconstruction, authorship, and avant-garde fiction, further extending interpretative potential. Where does it start, where does it take you, and where do you feel it?

Heidegger and Watsuji on Community

This paper explores the Japanese philosopher Tetsurō Watsuji’s idea of community as an alternative to Heidegger’s thinking on “Volk”. Watsuji was so greatly influenced by Heidegger’s unique way of philosophizing using ordinary German language that he undertook an etymological analysis of the Japanese word for humans, which provided him with the central idea of his ethics, namely that human beings are individual and social at the same time. However, despite this positive response to the German philosopher, Watsuji criticized Heidegger regarding the concept of authenticity. In Watsuji’s Ethics, authenticity is not regarded as a state of isolation but as a kind of communal relationship, which he characterizes as “nonduality between the self and the other”. In his lectures in the 1930s, however, Heidegger further developed the notion of authenticity, reconsidering it as the Volk, or a “space for community” on the basis of which actual community comes forth. According to my interpretation, Watsuji’s idea of nonduality between the self and other, which serves as a primordial place for the existence of any kind of community, can help us to consider our primary coexistence in a manner different from Heidegger’s.

‘Just a souvenir?’ Entangled identities within an early 20th century American Indian basket collection

In this article, we examine a collection of 47 American Indian baskets collected in the early 20th century, at the height of the ‘basket craze’. Currently stored in a Danish museum without much archival information, the baskets encapsulate art historical developments taking place at the turn of the century, a time fuelled by the Euro-American preoccupation with collecting and displaying Native American artefacts. Academic debates developed around the derived ‘tourist art’ and the colonial framework still haunt Euro-American notions of authenticity. We investigate the baskets, their role, cultural affiliation and significance in a bottom-up approach, with a persistent view to this historical context as well as their material testimony to the agency of the weavers navigating in a transformed economy and legislative restrictions. We show how the baskets materialize the entangled identities of makers, collectors and museums and how interdisciplinary research can provide a spatio-temporal context to overlooked collections.

Poezija u doba digitalne (re)produkcije - digitalna aura u novomedijskoj poeziji

The paper "Poetry in the Age of Digital (Re)production: Digital Aura in New Media Poetry" explores the evolution of new media poetry from the 1990s to the present day, engaging with Walter Benjamin's concept of the aura of authentic art to analyze three forms of new media poetry and define the digital aura in this context. The following analysis is grounded in new media theories, particularly those of Lev Manovich and N. Katherine Hayles. The paper discusses how digital technologies have transformed the creation, distribution, and consumption of poetry and challenged notions of authenticity and originality. It emphasizes the interaction between poets and software, the blurring of boundaries between different forms of new media art, and the concept of materiality in the digital realm. The paper highlights the significance of the material aspects of digital art, drawing attention to the interplay between the physical and virtual dimensions and the sensory experiences they provide. The paper traces the development of new media poetry in different web eras - Web 1.0 helped launch e-poetry, Web 2.0 enabled poetry on social media platforms, and Web 3.0 engraved NFT poetry on blockchain technology. The analysis of three distinct forms of new media poetry - kinetic poetry, Instapoetry, and NFT poetry - demonstrates how each form engages with the digital aura and challenges traditional notions of authenticity and artistic presence. The paper concludes that the digital aura is not an inherent characteristic of artwork, but a continuous process realized through the interactions of artists and the audience with code, software, and interface.

Virtual Authenticity: On Reinvention, Transformation and Functionality of Traditional Dancing during COVID-19

The following article is dedicated to the changes in folk dancing caused by the Covid pandemic and presents the author’s theoretical ideas on dancing in the digital world. The examples concern the phenomenon of dancing the Bulgarian way by Bulgarians and non-Bulgarians in urban settings, which the author has been studying for years and now diagnoses the emergence of a new virtual model and defines virtual authenticity. On the one hand it relates to the fluid notion of authenticity and organises self-reflection, free expression and rediscovering of one’s own identity in cyberspace. Distance-dancing the Bulgarian way provides a psychosomatic environment with previously unknown online effects and paradoxical dichotomies. In this notion of subjective authenticity, the memory of the social intimacy of circle dancing helps with the social intimacy in the online communication and supports the belief in the whole world as an open community. On the other hand, in addition to focusing on themselves through constrained aloneliness, dancers also engage with themes of the political past, cultural essence and national determination. The verbal discussions in social networks, at virtual folk dance camps and in university classes reveal the solid notion of authenticity. Transparency leads to more knowledge about Bulgaria and its interpretations; endless accessibility improves the correctness of the sources. Nevertheless, the new roles and hierarchies in digital Bulgaria provoke vulnerability and emotion. Recognising the phenomenon as persuasive and flattering communication, the increased verbal exchange connects both the individual and community aspects of authenticity. Even if the dance enthusiasts from Bulgaria and from abroad are not yet fully united in the so-called imagined or digital Bulgaria, the phenomenon participates more than ever in the idea of a global village. Distance-dancing the Bulgarian way creates third spaces of protection and resistance and establishes a global community that has a future beyond the pandemic.

Authenti-City

The new global cities and megacities, which are generally planned and built as result of political decisions and fast economic growth, are considered artificial and "false" in their nature. This widespread perception arises from a cognitive dissociation between the notions of authenticity and identity in relation to memory, time and the city’s own sedimentation. This perceived dichotomy is illustrated in the literature across the disciplines. Building on the work of Calvino, Burckhardt, Augé, Jacobs, Lynch, and others, this paper examines this question through the lens of sociology, architecture, literature, and philosophy. The goal of this dissertation, by means of dialectics, is to show how every city, even the most recent ones in terms of foundation and development, should be considered authentic. This paper argues that every city is a physical and socio-phenomenological expression of its residents. To support the study’s thesis, the city of Dubai will be closely examined. Dubai is a city that has all the elements that contribute to this collective vision, as well as the reasons for refuting it. In conclusion, this article will demonstrate that people are the driving force of a city, including more recent cities. It will further show that the built environment is only a base or matrix in support of the “Authentic-City,” a city made by people for people.

Designing Authenticity in Virtual Museum Tours

The paper focuses on the virtual tours that major institutions feature as part of their sites. As these tours often promise an authentic experience, the question of what means here arises. Since such programs do not simply serve to show digital images of museum objects but also convey a quasi-presence, the paper proposes to examine the authenticity of the experience of the virtual tour in comparison to the physical one. On the other hand, it also looks at the possible authenticity of museum exhibits in the virtual space. To do this, not only the notion of authenticity needs to be clarified, but also that of the virtual. Following Walter Benjamin’s approach, the paper examines what conception of time can constitute authenticity. Upon the concept of authenticity remaining the same in the case of the virtual, the paper opposes two positions: one is the historian’s view, and the other is that of the postmodern cultural critic. A comparison of their possible arguments aims to show that whatever we bring up against the virtual can also be played off—at least partly—against the traditional museum. In conclusion, it argues that these two museum forms are still part of the same museum paradigm.

Authenticity and Atwood’s ‘Scientific Turn’

Margaret Atwood’s science/speculative dystopian MaddAddam trilogy—Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013)—opens up questions about how genre-mixing indexes and probes interrelated notions of authenticity. This focus is prompted by the simple question of why Atwood, having established worldwide renown for realist novels of socio-historical authenticity, switched to blending realism with science/speculative fiction. Through analyzing how the trilogy departs from realism, while never truly embracing SF, the paper argues that while the realist novel may offer the strongest representations of authentic psychological states, larger questions of epistemic authority and the state of our world demand a literature that authenticates knowledge. The MaddAddam trilogy challenges the notion that realism’s social, existential and moral concerns are more authentic when supported with a scientific explanatory logic. Authenticity is thus found in a negotiation between Truth and whether to trust in the locations (social and geographical, literary and literal) of knowledge.

Authentic Assessment in Higher Education: Applying a Habermasian Framework

The pursuit of authentic assessment has challenged educators to redesign and reformulate assessment and evaluation to better meet the needs of digital-era learners. Its primary goal has been to bring more accurate representations of “real world” situations and characteristics to education through assessment. However, these moves toward authentic assessment have too often limited notions of authenticity to an external real world, which itself is often limited to the world of work. This restricted view of authenticity in assessment risks neglecting key aspects of students’ ontological and epistemological subjectivity, and their ever-changing, evolving and authentic notions of self. Authentic assessment requires a holistic approach that underscores the student as an individual within a society. This means we must strike a balance between social expectations and individual autonomy because authentic assessment that aims to replicate the world of work risks neglecting student agency, self-determination and the desire to achieve subjective authenticity. This paper’s purpose is to critically interrogate authentic assessment and analyse theoretical frameworks upon which higher education can build and implement balanced and holistic approaches to authenticity in assessment. Resting on Jurgen Habermas’ Knowledge Constitutive Interests, the authors argue for a more balanced approach to authentic assessment that incorporates human drives for objectified knowledge, communicative rationality, and emancipatory learning. After establishing the relevance of Habermas’ theoretical framework to authentic assessment, this paper examines the value of self, peer and negotiated assessment and the potential of digital tools to aid these processes.