Keywords
socio-political identity
mediated identity
folklore
rituals
situated knowledge
discourse
narrative
existentialism
Kierkegaard
Abstract
Two hundred years have passed since the question of subjectivity (re-interpreted through Kierkegaard’s existentialism) became central in modern philosophy. Over these two centuries, multiple theories addressed and questioned the borders between authentic subjectivity and an internalized panopticon of the hegemonic views that dominate the subject. Nevertheless, they still have to be definitively defined. As we may try to point Fake News (FN) is an opponent to subjectivity, and yet it comes from the subject. FN is the intentional spreading through new technologies of false information on a global level by subjects that use social media, a process influencing not only the sense of socio-political reality but also the concept of identity. Identities (personal or collective) are in general the combination of the socially determined understanding of ‘who I am’ and the socially and psychologically influenced ‘mental model’ of ‘what the world - and the self within it - should be’, all expressed and produced under the fundamental influence of our idiosyncratic characteristics.
One of the fields that all these factors meet and interact is the new mediated environment where almost everyone can participate and contribute. According to the Sociology of Communication as founded by Giddens, Habermas and Luckmann (Leydesdorff 2000) this makes the public part of our identity the dominant one, creating a ritual in which our narcissistic elements dominate our private ones. The Self, addressing itself into the public like an echo and back to the Self, becomes ritualized. In our paper, we explore the interrelation of this phenomenon with the creation and distribution of Fake News, from the vantage point of Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy.
References
Beaney, Michael. 2003. “Analysis.” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. Retrieved September 05, 2019 (https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/analysis/).
Bauman, Zygmunt. 1992. “Cultural Theory and Cultural Change: Survival as a social construct.” Pp. 112-126 in Cultural Theory and Cultural Change, edited by M. Featherstone. London: Sage.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 2011. “From Pilgrim to Tourist, a Short History of Identity.” Pp. 18-36 in Questions of Cultural Identity, edited by P. Hall and Paul Du Gay. Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Sage Publications, Inc.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 2011. “Migration and Identity in the Globalised World.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 37(4): 425-435. https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453710396809
Baur, Jürgen and Sebastian Braun. 2000. Freiwilliges Engagement und Partizipation in ostdeutschen Sportvereinen: eine empirische Analyse zum Institutionentransfer. Köln: Strauß.
Beck, Urlich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.
Bette, Karl-Heinrich. 1999. Systemtheorie und Sport. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Binder, Susanne and Jelena Tošić. 2005. “Refugees as a Particular Form of Transnational Migrations and Social Transformations: Socioanthropological and Gender Aspects.” Current Sociology 53(4): 607-24. DOI: 10.1177/0011392105052717.
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that Matter. On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London and New York: Routledge.
Denham, Robert. 1996. Collected Works of Northrop Frye: The educated imagination and other writings on critical theory 1933-1963. Toronto CA: University of Toronto Press.
Douglas, Kellner. 1992. “Popular culture and constructing postmodern identities.” Pp. 141-177 in Modernity and Identity, edited by Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman. Oxford UK: Basil Blackwell.
Durham, Gigi. 2008. The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It. London: Harry N. Abrams.
Fornas, Johan and Xinaris Charis. 2013. “Mediated Identity Formation.” Current Trends in Research and Society, Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture 20(2): 11-26.
Giddens, Anthony. 1996, Sociological Imagination: Introduction to Sociology. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Hall, Stuart and Paul Du Gay, eds. 2011. Questions of Cultural Identity. London UK: Sage Publications.
Kierkegaard, Søren. 1992. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, edited and translated by Howard and Edna Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Leydesdorff, Loet. 2000. A Sociological Theory of Communication: The Self-Organization of the Knowledge-Based Society. Irvin Ca US: Universal Publishers.
Lyotard, Jean Francois. 1979. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minnesota US: University of Minnesota Press.
Maffesoli, Michel. 1996. The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society. London: Sage.
McMillin, Divya. 2009. Mediated Identities: Youth, Agency, and Globalization in Mediated Youth. New York US: International Academic Publishers.
Quinn, Robert. 2003. “The Performative Self: Improvisation for Self and Other.” New Theatre Quarterly 19(1): 18-22.
Ritivoi, Andreea Deciou. 2002. Yesterday’s Self: Nostalgia and the Immigrant Identity. Maryland BA: Rowman and Littlefield.
Riva, Giusepe and Galiberti Carlo. 1998. “Computer-mediated communication: Identity and social interaction in an electronic environment in Genetic Social and General Psychology.” Monographs 124(4): 434-464.
Stack, George. 1973. “Kierkegaard: The Self and Ethical Existence.” Ethics 83(2): 108-125.
Star, Christopher. 2012. The Empire of the Self. Self-Command and Political Speech in Seneca and Petronius. Maryland BA: John Hopkins University Press.
Swhartzman, Helen. 1979. Transformations: The Anthropology of Children’s Play. London, UK: Plenum Press.
Silverstone, Roger. 2005. “The Sociology of Mediation and Communication.” Pp. 188-207 in The Sage Handbook of Sociology, edited by C. Calhoun, Ch. Rojek and B. Turner. London UK: Sage Publications.
Schönbaumsfeld, Genia. 2010. “Objectively there is no truth – Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard on Religious Belief.” Pp. 131-147 in Ludwig Wittgenstein on Ethics, Mysticism and Religion, edited by U. Arnswald. KIT: Scientific Publishing.
Shakespeare, William. 2013. The Tempest. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
License
Manuscript authors are responsible for obtaining copyright permissions for any copyrighted materials included within manuscripts. The authors must provide permission letters, when appropriate, to the Society Register Editors.
In addition, all published papers in Society Register are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported License.
1.1 The Author hereby warrants that he/she is the owner of all the copyright and other intellectual property rights in the Work and that, within the scope of the present Agreement, the paper does not infringe the legal rights of another person. The owner of the copyright work also warrants that he/she is the sole and original creator thereof and that is not bound by any legal constraints in regard to the use or sale of the work.
1.2. The Publisher warrants that is the owner of the PRESSto platform for open access journals, hereinafter referred to as the PRESSto Platform.
2. The Author grants the Publisher non-exclusive and free of charge license to unlimited use worldwide over an unspecified period of time in the following areas of exploitation:
2.1. production of multiple copies of the Work produced according to the specific application of a given technology, including printing, reproduction of graphics through mechanical or electrical means (reprography) and digital technology;
2.2. marketing authorisation, loan or lease of the original or copies thereof;
2.3. public performance, public performance in the broadcast, video screening, media enhancements as well as broadcasting and rebroadcasting, made available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them;
2.4. inclusion of the Work into a collective work (i.e. with a number of contributions);
2.5. inclusion of the Work in the electronic version to be offered on an electronic platform, or any other conceivable introduction of the Work in its electronic version to the Internet;
2.6. dissemination of electronic versions of the Work in its electronic version online, in a collective work or independently;
2.7. making the Work in the electronic version available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them, in particular by making it accessible via the Internet, Intranet, Extranet;
2.8. making the Work available according to appropriate license pattern CC BY-NC 4.0 as well as another language version of this license or any later version published by Creative Commons.
3. The Author grants the Publisher permission to reproduce a single copy (print or download) and royalty-free use and disposal of rights to compilations of the Work and these compilations.
4. The Author grants the Publisher permission to send metadata files related to the Work, including to commercial and non-commercial journal-indexing databases.
5. The Author represents that, on the basis of the license granted in the present Agreement, the Publisher is entitled and obliged to:
5.1. allow third parties to obtain further licenses (sublicenses) to the Work and to other materials, including derivatives thereof or compilations made, based on or including the Work, whereas the provisions of such sub-licenses will be the same as with the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Creative Commons sub-license or another language version of this license, or any later version of this license published by Creative Commons;
5.2. make the Work available to the public in such a way that members of the public may access the Work from a place and at a time individually chosen by them, without any technological constraints;
5.3. appropriately inform members of the public to whom the Work is to be made available about sublicenses in such a way as to ensure that all parties are properly informed (appropriate informing messages).
6. Because of the royalty-free provision of services of the Author (resulting from the scope of obligations stipulated in the present Agreement), the Author shall not be entitled to any author’s fee due and payable on the part of the Publisher (no fee or royalty is payable by the Publisher to the Author).
7.1. In the case of third party claims or actions for indemnity against the Publisher owing to any infractions related to any form of infringement of intellectual property rights protection, including copyright infringements, the Author is obliged to take all possible measures necessary to protect against these claims and, when as a result of legal action, the Publisher, or any third party licensed by the Publisher to use the Work, will have to abandon using the Work in its entirety or in part or, following a court ruling in a legal challenge, to pay damages to a third party, whatever the legal basis
7.2. The Author will immediately inform the Publisher about any damage claims related to intellectual property infringements, including the author’s proprietary rights pertaining to a copyrighted work, filed against the Author. of liability, the Author is obliged to redress the damage resulting from claims made by third party, including costs and expenditures incurred in the process.
7.3. To all matters not settled herein provisions of the Polish Civil Code and the Polish Copyright and Related Rights Act shall apply.