Media studies, Vol. 1 No. 1-2, 2010.
Conference paper
The Concept of Credibility (Validity) in Television and Internet News Discourse: Critical Analysis
Boris Ružić
orcid.org/0000-0003-4491-4763
; associate at the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Philosophy, Croatia
Abstract
This article reverses the traditional notion of media (television, radio or news papers) as a unidirectional agent of communication from producer to receiver to a more appropriate paradigm in
which information is not embedded with hierarchy. The new media perspective and the appropriation of technology (Internet) have changed the nature of information dissemination. One cannot discuss authenticity or credibility in terms of ”telling the truth or lying”. On the contrary, users today can verify information by contrasting traditional media, or by autonomous investigation on the Internet. In this manner, the obtained information is rendered semantically ambiguous. With an approach akin to cultural studies, the authority of the speakers becomes important (unlike today in mainstream television media where a speaker is hidden behind his or her program). New media provides a unique perspective in which the user is always the arbiter of informational usefulness. The crisis that is manifested in traditional media by the lack of subjectivity of the reporter becomes diametrically opposite on the Internet. The all-knowing subject vanishes and gives place to an inter-subjective exchange which deletes hierarchy and the ontology of the ”truth”. A mirror perspective becomes the dominant order, by which one becomes inter-subjective par excellence. Within the present and future of new media, credibility will not be reserved for the ideological mass producers of information, but rather the credibility of the users. By becoming media, users begin to bear the burden of subjective analysis and multivocality.
Keywords
MEDIUM; NEW MEDIA PRODUCTION; AUTHENTICITY (CREDIBILITY); VIRTUAL; IDEOLOGY
Hrčak ID:
76710
URI
Publication date:
20.12.2010.
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