Subjectivity and new media in post-truth times: a discursive analytical view of narrative constructions in contemporary time
Discourse Analysis. Subjectivity. Post-truth. New media.
We investigate,from Discourse Analysis’(DA) perspective, other forms of subjectivity that emerge from post-truth in digital communication times and narrative disputes in the political-electoral scenario. The empirical object starts from the main fake news spread during the presidential elections in Brazil, in 2018, for a future methodological sample involving the values (morals) and the ‘gay kit’matters, widely explored during the elections. The subjectivity issue becomes opportune and thought-provokingin this case, as it still presents gaps not sufficiently explored in the Discourse Analysis scope, especially the Semiolinguistic Theory by Charaudeau, centered on the idea of a subject with autonomy. The first approach was to question this autonomy, based on this fake news context’sparticularities, which could ‘subvert’elements considered essentialin the Charaudeauan theory. In parallel, we incorporate into the research, in an interdisciplinary perspective, theoretical and methodological contributions that might cover any unforeseen gaps in Semiolinguistics, such as observing the discourse reception based on ideas brought up by Benjamin (theory of shock) or Dunker (psychoanalysis). We seek to explore theethosissue through different methodsand also reflect on the ethical dimension based on Marie-Anne Paveau and Foucault, among other authors. From Foucault, we extracted important thoughts around notions of power, regimes of truth, and the very conception of the subject. Among the results so far, we see that the understanding of subjectivity in the fake news environment transposes some ‘analytical limits’found in Semiolinguistics. This transposition in noticeable, for instance, asthe recognition of the communication contract is compromised and camouflaged as if it were an information contract. Along the same line, we notice strategies tending to ‘forge’a balance in the knowledgeorganization, which is desirable for constructing social representationsand, therefore, for the subject’s autonomy. We refer in this case to the tendency for fake news to be based on beliefs but pass for based on knowledge. The reception sphere (and its effects) also deserves attention, which, in the scope of fake news and digital social networks, tends to be led by a shallow and distracted understanding, without much ambiguity, in the interpretive process. Such aspects themselves already denote a subject overdetermined by the urgency of readings, replies, clicks, and shares; a process seduced by the ‘urge,’which we call ‘latent reception effect.’Finally, in the external domain (social being), we notice that there are in fake news implicit strategies developed by subjects witha political-ideological, neoconservative project not explicitly revealed. It is then possible to see, blurred by the post-truth universe, narrative constructions considered manipulative, which restrain the heterogeneity of voices and suffocate singularity and otherness. In Foucault’s language, we would not be facing mere disputes for power or new regimes of truth, but the desire to assert a ‘state of domination,’and almost aporia that, by stifling freedom, shows its contempt for its ethical dimension.