Multimodalidade e fake news: investigando os significados visuais nas postagens do Facebook contendo notícias falsas

Litiane Barbosa Barbosa Macedo; Isabel de Sousa Oliveira; Lucas Melo de Lima

doi:10.22168/2237-6321-32279

Authors

Litiane Barbosa Barbosa Macedo Universidade Federal do Piauí
Isabel de Sousa Oliveira Universidade Federal do Piauí
Lucas Melo de Lima Universidade Federal do Piauí

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22168/2237-6321-32279

Keywords:

Multimodality. Fake News. Visual Meanings.

Abstract

This investigation seeks to analyze the representative visual meanings constructed in recent posts containing fake News which were disseminated through Facebook to understand which strategies the producers of these visual modes use to legitimize such news as veritable. In order to analyze the visual meanings, we made use of the Grammar of Visual Design (GDV), proposed by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006). Regarding the relevance of images in multimodal texts presenting fake News, we observed that the most prominent themes found in quantitative terms in the last year were Politics and Health. For this article, we present a sample of our analysis regarding the images inserted in health contexts, specifically the fake News about the new coronavirus. The results of this research show that the images play an extremely important role in the construction of the meanings of the multimodal composition of posts containing fake News. The imagery compositions analyzed are mostly photographs which were used strategically outside their original contexts. Their representative constructs, both narrative and conceptual ones, corroborate with the false information, reinforcing such misinformation. In this sense, it is urgent to plan educational actions to recognize images as social constructions not exempt from neutrality, taking into account that visual resources have historically been considered as something natural and unquestionable (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, 2006; MACHIN, 2012; BATEMAN, 2014).

Author Biographies

Litiane Barbosa Barbosa Macedo, Universidade Federal do Piauí

Possui graduação em Letras - Lingua Inglesa e Literaturas pela Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (2010), mestrado em Inglês: Estudos Linguísticos e Literários pela Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (2014) e doutorado em Inglês: Estudos Linguísticos e Literários pela Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (2018). Atualmente é professora do magistério superior da Universidade Federal do Piauí. Tem experiência na área de Lingüística, com ênfase em Lingüística Aplicada, atuando principalmente nos seguintes temas: Análise Critica do Discurso; Gramática Sistêmica Funcional; Estudos da Linguagem, Raça, Gênero e Representações em diversos modos semióticos; Estudos de Gênero em contextos africanos.
Isabel de Sousa Oliveira, Universidade Federal do Piauí

Graduanda do curso de Letras Inglês da Universidade Federal do Piauí.
Lucas Melo de Lima, Universidade Federal do Piauí

Graduando do curso de Letras Inglês da Universidade Federal do Piauí.

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