Abstract
This chapter aims to contribute to pressing debates surrounding the issue of ‘fake news’ by focusing on the politicisation of visual imagery. The Trump administration’s use of ‘fake news’ as a term of critique directed at journalists and their news organisations represents a cynical strategy of deflection and deception, one that risks destabilising confidence in the free flow of information underpinning political deliberation in a democratic system. We aim to promote discussion by highlighting ways in which the public circulation of photographs prove consistent with purposeful, albeit inchoate strategies of distraction and diversion mobilised by the Trump administration and its supporters, as well as how publicly circulating photographic images can also occasionally disrupt or frustrate such strategies.
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- 1.
See, for example, Rutenberg (2017).
- 2.
At a rally in Florida on 18 January 2017, President-elect Trump appeared to refer to a terrorist attack that did not take place: ‘You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden? Who would believe this? Sweden!’ (Bloom 2017).
- 3.
The original tweet and subsequent comments by Schwartz are reproduced on camera and photography website PetaPixel (Zhang 2017).
- 4.
See also William J. Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-photographic Era (MIT Press, 1992).
- 5.
- 6.
The template for this sort of in-depth coverage was provided when Cornell Capa photographed the first 100 days of John F. Kennedy’s presidency for Magnum Photos in 1961.
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Allbeson, T., Allan, S. (2019). The War of Images in the Age of Trump. In: Happer, C., Hoskins, A., Merrin, W. (eds) Trump’s Media War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94069-4_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94069-4_5
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