In the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic, a trend of Instagram as a news source emerged in the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2020 (Reuters, 2020). Instagram’s visual factor has made accessing news more feasible and convenient through a curated feed. Consequently, news producers are migrating to social media platforms, including Instagram to serve news consumption needs. However, journalism on social media has been criticized for its lack of journalistic legitimacy where media trust is challenged by the sensationalism of news to drive engagement metrics. Moreover, the COVID-19 infodemic (WHO, 2020) has escalated the concern of news credibility due to a circulation of misinformation regarding the pandemic and overwhelming citizens. Hence, the objective of this study is to analyze how a news outlet on Instagram maintains journalistic legitimacy and how Instagram users navigate news through information abundance in finding credible and trustworthy news.  The analysis of this study takes into account an Indonesian news outlet on Instagram called Narasi Newsroom, by interviewing a representative from the news producer, a content analysis of their news content, and interviewing Indonesian Instagram users. The empirical findings illustrate how Narasi Newsroom can revive journalistic legitimacy through an innovative approach without diminishing journalism quality on Instagram. With its principle of educating the audience to understand the news beyond factual statements, Narasi Newsroom’s strategy of riding the wave to serve audience needs upholds journalism values through critical thinking and credible sources. By conducting the study through updating the encoding/decoding model (Hall, 1973; 2009), it was found that the social media logic (Dijck & Poell, 2013) can balance journalism practice on Instagram as well as practices critical thinking for news consumers in finding trustworthy news. In light of the post-truth era, media trust and news credibility may be challenged, however, they are not lost when journalism on social media takes accountability to serve news consumers’ needs. Consequently, it takes both the news producers and consumers to take a critical stance to preserve trust in the news.

Les identités et les connaissances qui traversent les relations entre les individus soulèvent les mêmes enjeux d’appréhension, de normalisation et de reproduction des comportements et des discours qui font le monde social. Elles répondent toutefois à des logiques différentes : les identités appuient les différences qui naissent de perceptions subjectives et de confrontations d’intérêts, alors que les connaissances sont portées par des idéaux d’universalité et strictement tenues par les réalités objectives. À partir d’une revue de la littérature et faisant état de la question, ce mémoire s’intéresse à la perméabilité croissante qui s’établit entre identités et savoirs par le recours à un positionnement essentialisé, que nous qualifions de « positionnalité ». Notamment, nous interrogeons ses formes idéologiques contemporaines afin de comprendre quelles sont les origines de ces positionnements identitaires essentialisés et leurs conséquences pour l’élaboration et la médiation du savoir. Nous établissons que la positionnalité est le fruit d’un abord constructiviste des régimes de vérité et de pouvoir, et qu’elle s’appuie sur des lectures partisanes des héritages de la théorie critique. Nous mettons aussi en exergue l’environnement politique façonné par « l’ère post-vérité », caractérisé par une dépréciation de la valeur des faits et la contestation des autorités épistémiques traditionnelles. Enfin, nous avançons que le développement de la positionnalité, précipité par l’ère post-vérité, entretient une dynamique néolibérale d’appropriation ou de privatisation des savoirs pris en tant que biens communs. Les thèmes abordés dans ce mémoire nous conduisent à penser que l’essentialisation des positionnements identitaires a dépassé le cadre strictement épistémologique, et sert désormais une accumulation et une appropriation exclusive des moyens de la connaissance. / Identities and knowledge permeate relationships between individuals, raising the same issues of comprehension, normalization and reproduction of behaviors and discourse that constitute the social world. However, they follow different logics: identities reproduce the differences that arise from subjective perceptions and confrontations of interests, while knowledge rests on ideals of universality and of objective reality. Through an extensive review of the literature, this thesis examines the growing permeability between identities and knowledge that has arisen from a recent, essentialized form of positioning we call "positionality". In particular, we question this contemporary ideological form in order to understand the origins of such essentialized identity positions as well as their consequences for both the development and mediation of knowledge. We establish that positionality relies on a constructivist approach to truth and power regimes as well as on partisan readings of critical theory’s legacies. We also highlight the political environment of the “post-truth era,” characterized by a devaluation of facts and the challenging of traditional epistemic authorities. Finally, we argue that the development of positionality, hastened by the post-truth era, reinforces neoliberal appropriation, or privatization, of knowledge heretofore understood as a public good. The topics addressed in this thesis lead us to think that the essentialization of identity positioning has moved from a strictly epistemological question to one concerning the accumulation and exclusive ownership of the means of knowledge production.

Compulsory vaccination is one of the fundamental pillars of public health protection that has helped eradicate many previously lethal and widespread diseases from our geographical area. Although the vaccination rates remain high in the Czech Republic, the number of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children is growing. Reasons for this restraint are various. This thesis looks at the issue from the perspective of social constructivism. By implementing in-depth interviews, it tries to contribute to understanding how parents perceive the influence of the media on their decisions on the issue of compulsory vaccination. Other theoretical starting points are the media construction of reality, the theory of representation or biopower, and biopolitics in Michel Foucault's conception. A significant part of the theory also describes the current period, which is characterized by terms such as post-truth or post-factual era, and addresses which role plays new media such as social networks and the internet in the growing mistrust in expert knowledge and institutions. The analytical part is devoted to the analysis of collected data in the grounded theory approach. The identified categories then describe how parents evaluate the role of the media in the debate on compulsory vaccination, how they evaluate...

Collaborating in the Electric Age: [onto]Riffological Experiments in Posthumanizing Education and Theorizing a Machinic Arts-Based Research is a study about locating opportunities and entry points for introducing consideration of the nonhuman and posthuman to pedagogical perspectives that are traditionally concerned with human beings and epistemological subjects. The research, herein, engages doings in collaborative effort, during conditions of unprecedented interconnectedness facilitated by the electric age. Steeped in a environment thus created by technologies’ immense ubiquity and influence, this collaboration endeavours to recognize their full research participation, alongside that of humans. This research presents collaboratively conducted, published inquiries that have been coauthored by myself and fellow doctoral candidate Richard Wainwright. Each facilitates, then attempts to articulate ways to decentre the human in educational contexts, beginning with our own human perspectives. As exercises in broadening our considerations of the life forms, matter, and nonhuman entities that surround humanity, this research prompts us to recognize much more than what humanity typically acknowledges as existing, given the anthropocentric frameworks it has constructed. We reorientate the nature of these relationships—posthumanizing them—and in doing so, disrupt our own thinking to work something different than our circumstances have hitherto informed us to consider. We have co-developed a study and conducted research in collaboration with human and nonhuman research participants.Five nationally and internationally published co-authored journal articles, a book chapter, and five intermezzos (short “observational” pieces) comprise this study that explores collaboration and recombinatoriality during “the electric age” (McLuhan, 1969, 10:05). Recognizing humanity’s increasingly inextricable relationships with technologies, this collaboratively conducted study draws into creative assemblage Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s philosophical concepts; new materialism as cultural theory; the prescient observations and predictions of Marshall McLuhan and a media studies curriculum he co-developed over forty years ago; arts-based research; museum exhibitions; features of music production such as sampling, mashup, remix, and turntabling; among many other notes and tones. A conceptually developed riff mobilizes our inquiries as “plug in and play,” while its academic study is theorized as [onto]Riffology. Ontological shifts beget a machinic arts-based research (MABR) that develops a posthuman critical pedagogy inspired by Negri and Guattari (2010). Collaborating in the Electric Age: [onto]Riffological Experiments in Posthumanizing Education and Theorizing a Machinic Arts-Based Research celebrates collaborativity, discovery, and learning during the electric age. / Graduate / 2023-01-07