Affective Communication in

Infowarfare

Andreas Ventsel (Tartu University)

Vienna,

29th November

Structure of today´s meeting

1. Key-terms: post-truth rhetoric, informationoverload and informationfatigue

2. Affective publics and communication

3. Visual affective meaning-making

Introduction: Post-truth discourse and social media

• Post-truth news culture is not characterized by knowledge-based information and arguments (controlled, logically-grounded ideas) rather appeals to emotions and personal associations

• Post-truth rhetoric – the strategies of gaining visibility, promoting certain interpretative frameswhich enable persuading the audience and winning attention

• Social media has in turn also influenced the dominant news culture and clicks, shares and (re)tweets have become important parameters

• Virality itself (which is now visible via quantitative meta-data, and what is more – foregrounded by the recommendation algorithms) has become a criterion that makes some more valuable than some others

Introduction: Information overload and information fatigue

• The contextualization and critical-analytical processing of information has become more demanding (in a sense of our time resource and attention)

• Many informational/interpretative choices can be burdensome and instead of feeling in control, people feel confusion

• Interpreters tend to take a position of a passive/ apathetic bystander (Nordenson2008, Schwartz 2005)

• (Political) information fatigue- reaction to information overload and controversial, inconsistent information on the background of which it is hard to tell what and who could be believed (information fog)

Information warfare and social media

According to Danish infowar expertThomas Elkijaer Nissen:

“Effects that support the goals andobjectives of the multiple actors“fighting” in the social networkmedia sphere, including influencingperceptions of what is going on,can, in turn, inform decision-making and behaviours of relevantactors”(2015: 9).

Social media and affective communication• The signification norms of social

media don´t demand punctualexplication of various relations andthe justification of one´sinterpretative decisions

• Affective communication is basedon sharing immediate reactions and(pre-)emotions (Harsin 2015,Papacharissi 2016 Papailias 2016,Prøitz 2017)

• Affective communication refers tothe cognitive atmosphere of briefmessages that often elicit emotionalidentification in the members of theaudience (e.g., tweets on Twitter,hastags).

Social media and affective communication• The information fragments

recognized as meaningfullyimportant but not yet wellarticulated within audience.

• Often, the social media threads don´t represent new information; they mostly consist of the previously known fragments, repeated over and over again

• Social media streams may attain a pace and rhythmicality that is emotive, phatic, and intense even when little new is going on “the ground”

• These fragments easily anchorpublic topics with personal associations, emotions etc (Gyorl2013)

Visual affective communication• Pictorial images are seen as more general and easier

to understand and interpret than the messages ofverbal-discrete language

• The specificity and recognition of the image is alwaysaccompanied by the ambivalence of meaning and bypossibilities of multiple interpretations (Blair 2004)

• One of the reasons for the greater force andimmediacy of the visual—is the power of visualimagery to evoke involuntary and affectivereactions

• Visual images does its work by making contact alsowith our non-conscious meaning-generatingapparatus (Blair 2004)

• This kind of messages conduits for connection,identification, but they do not facilitate thenegotiation of collective identity (Papacharissi 2016)

An abstract image

• We can bring out images distorting spatialperception that are especially popular incognitive psychology– such as the non-correspondence of colors,

proportions, etc. to our everyday experience)

• This type of cognitive psychological excitationfocuses our attention and may increases theclickability of a text

• In turn, this makes possible the spreading of thetext and the generation of its derivatives (egmemes)

• And spreading misinformation with it

An abstract image: Appex twin T69-Collapsehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=SqayDnQ2wmw

Visualization of text

The written text also function as attention catcherVisual principles:

• bolding, differentiations in size and type of fonts;

• bullet-points, s p a c i n g s, indenting, treatmentof margins, white space as visual framing;

• the placement of letter or word, the shape of theletter or its size, all these now need to be treatedas signs through which sender can manipulatewith text (Madisson 2017)

Visualization of text: The Sydney Morning Herald and Comic Sans

A realistic image representing a more or less recogniszable object without a title/text.

Visual or spatial relations are not oriented to causality (Blair 2004).

Visual arguments are typically enthymemes— they leave gaps to be filled in by the audience.

Visual manipulation does not occur on the level of articulation and argument, but on the level of reference that has as its primary function attention grabbing, primary semiotic recognition and individual identification.

(Iconic) images have an affective dimension where an individual’s proximity to the event, their cultural and personal memories, and their experiences play a central role in the construction of iconicity (Dahmen& Morrison,2016; Spratt, Peterson, & Lagos, 2005).

Iconic images are videly recognized, understood to be representations of socially and historically significant, emotional identification (Hariman & Lucaites, 2007)

A realistic image representing a more or less recognizable object without a title/title.

A realistic image representing a more or less recognisable object without a title/title: Aleppo boy

Omran Daqneesh

A realistic image representing a more or less recognizable object with a title/text

• In messages that include both verbal and pictorial information, both types of information can function as giving rise to misinformation and as guiding the receiver's interpretation

• One of the causes of the spread of misinformation is that it is designed to meet emotional needs, reinforce our personal beliefs, and provide fodder for our inherent desire to make sense of the world (Silverman 2015:45)

• Iconic images and visuals may function as triggers of “right” interpretative frames, connotations and associations in text (Madisson 2017)

A realistic image representing a more or less recognizable object with a title/text.

A realistic image representing a more or less recognizable object with a title/text: pictorial text

• “Intertextuality is one of the key elements of iconic images’ rhetorical power” (Prøitz 2017)

• The multilayered meanings and associations of various cultural images generate powerful resonances and guarantee wide attention (Blair 2004)

• The viral circulation of visual arguments across cultural boundaries, therefore, threatens to become a catalyst for intercultural political conflict (Clancy & Clancy 2016)

A pictorial text or a combination of a pictorial image and a text

Conclusion

Combaining:

• Cultural memory research

• Semiotic approaches

• Psychological research

• Internet research

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