ABSTRACT
This chapter explores different relations of truthfulness and discusses the truth claims of the different qualified media types. Truthfulness is a transmedial notion and when we speak of truth in different contexts, we refer to different kinds of knowledge. Truth, facts and authenticity are often used in everyday discourse as part of apparently clear-cut binaries like truth–lie, authentic–fake, fact–fiction. The truth claims of media can be employed in communication to produce a perception of truthfulness. As media products can be truthful both in relation to external perception or inner experience, another way to look at truth claims is to divide them into objective and subjective truth claims. The chapter discusses how different forms of disinformation draw on the truth claims of news media and construct a perception of truthfulness that is based more on internal coherence than on events that actually have taken place.
