EditorialPost-truth and the political: Constructions and distortions in representing political facts
Section snippets
Journalists as truth-speakers?
Constituting one of the authoritative institutions referred to by Žižek, 1999, Gibson, 2018, professional journalism defends its legitimacy by emphasizing its ‘ability to provide an indexical and referential presentation of the world at hand’ (Zelizer, 2004: 103). That is, ‘objectivity-as-a-value’ (Carpentier and Trioen, 2010) has long been – and still is – considered as a nodal point of ‘good journalism’ (Deuze, 2005). Schudson (2001: 150) provides a definition of objectivity that is,
Transparency
Transparency in journalism and alternative media is increasingly advocated for reviving journalism and for changing the crusted methods of traditional media. Kovach and Rosenstiel (2007), for instance, criticize the widespread contemporary practices as hollow devices which need to convince the audience of the objectivity and trustworthiness of journalism while obscuring actual verification methods or even deceiving the public. As the authors contend, journalists can never be objective, but
Contributions
In this special issue of Discourse, Context & Media, we have brought together a number of contributions exploring the discursive relation between political communication, media and ‘true facts’. The authors focus on the constructions and distortions of information by all parties involved in media news coverage. The insights offered by the studies may contribute to more transparency as regards to the context, status and nature of (post-)truth on the politics-media nexus, and how journalists and
Roel Coesemans is an Assistant Professor of Dutch Linguistics and Journalism Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium. His research focuses on the pragmatics and multimodality of news discourse in mainstream and alternative news media.
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Cited by (5)
Hypocrisy, authenticity, and the rhetorical dynamics of populism
2024, Pragmatics and Beyond New SeriesPerspectives on Post-Truth
2023, Social EpistemologyIn Praise of Skepticism: Trust but Verify
2022, In Praise of Skepticism: Trust but VerifyHow to hijack a discourse? Reflections on the concepts of post-truth and fake news
2020, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Roel Coesemans is an Assistant Professor of Dutch Linguistics and Journalism Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium. His research focuses on the pragmatics and multimodality of news discourse in mainstream and alternative news media.
Jelle Mast is an Assistant Professor of Journalism Studies in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) Belgium. As the coordinator of the Brussels Institute for Journalism Studies his main research interests are in the areas of visual communication journalism practice genre hybridization and professional ethics.
Renée Moernaut is currently employed as a postdoctoral research fellow in the department of Linguistics and Literary Studies (Applied Linguistics) of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium. Her main research interests include multimodal framing, environmental and climate change communication and journalism practice (especially the mainstream-alternative divide).
Martina Temmerman is an Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium. She is the program director of the Masters in Journalism at the Department of Applied Linguistics, where she teaches linguistic discourse analysis and journalistic writing classes. Her research focuses on the linguistic analysis of journalistic communication.