Hannah Guy

An examination of the role of images in the spread of disinformation on social media (PhD)

Principal supervisor: Professor Maggie MacLure
Supervisor: Professor Farida Vis
Start date: October 2018
End date: October 2021

Background and aims

‘Fake news’ has infiltrated contemporary social consciousness following Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, when he adopted the phrase to attack the media. Subsequently, issues regarding social media-based disinformation have snowballed into a genuine journalistic, informational, and literacy concern, with many apprehensive about the potential societal consequences of online disinformation. Accordingly, researchers now work hard towards understanding this new phenomenon. However, while online disinformation is almost always accompanied by image(s), discussions on and research about disinformation is often broad, with few taking into consideration the role of images.

Despite social media becoming increasingly image-based, they remain under-explored and are thus a key area requiring stand-alone examination. Images are powerful, always carrying literal and metaphoric messages. This means images, especially photographs, are persuasive; they are a key visual form used to represent reality, seen as an entirely faithful copy of events. Thus, there is a growing need to understand their role in the spread of disinformation on social media.

Using an innovative interdisciplinary analytical framework, this research (in collaboration with First Draft News, a leading international initiative that fights mis- and disinformation through fieldwork, research, and education, and based at the Visual Social Media Lab) investigates the full cycle of a piece of photographic disinformation; from production, its circulation across social and mainstream media, to audience responses. This case study questions how an image becomes news in a digital context, the role an image plays in online news-related disinformation, and how online consumers understand, respond, and process visual disinformation.

publications

Vis, F., Faulkner, S., Noble, S., & Guy, H. (2020). ‘When Twitter Got #woke: Black Lives Matter, DeRay McKesson, Twitter, and the Appropriation of the Aesthetics of Protest’. In McGarry A., Erhart I., Eslen-Ziya H., Jenzen O., & Korkut U. (Eds.), The Aesthetics of Global Protest: Visual Culture and Communication (pp. 247-266). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Vis, F., Faulkner, S., & Guy, H. (2020). ‘Verifying and questioning images’ In Silverman, C. (Ed.), Verification Handbook: For Disinformation And Media Manipulation. Brussels: European Journalism Centre.

Contact HANNAH

Email: hannah.guy@stu.mmu.ac.uk