Oldal 52 [52]
Part II. Storytelling in the Information Age ] 51
Fake news texts and hoaxes attract tabloid content-hungry users through
tabloid-style headlines, sensationalist headlines and photos, and withholding
information. Veszekszki (2017) characterizes fake news communication as
‘clickbait. Clicks often also lead to the sharing of content, which guarantees
the rapid spread of the content and further clicks, and thus economic gain.
Social media also spread political fake news. Photoshopped images and deep¬
fake videos are particularly manipulative tools for spreading false or fake
information, as their ultra-realistic nature makes users believe that a person
has been to a place or made a statement that contradicts their true beliefs.
Such content can also be used as a tool for political disinformation campaigns
(Veszelszky, 2021). Aczél (2017) has pointed out that the interpretation of
social media as a source of news evokes an ancient, communal model of
information exchange, and therefore considers netnography, which is able
to explore the creation, spread and socio-cultural impact of viral content, as
a suitable tool for the study of fake news.
CHAPTER 2.
THE METAMORPHOSIS OF 20™-CENTURY AUDIOVISUAL
NARRATIVES IN THE 21°'-CENTURY
A new feature of millennial cinematic narratives is their complexity. In
order to reconstruct the story, the viewer must creatively look for logical
connections between the fragments presented. Instead of the linear narrative
characteristic of Hollywood genres appealing to mass culture, nonlinear or
elliptical narratives are increasingly prevailing. Good examples of puzzle
narratives include the mystical time travel crime series The Dark or the films
of Christopher Nolan.
Cameron (2012) refers to complex Hollywood scripts as modular narratives,
in which timelines do not follow a traditional linear pattern; instead, the units
of time are presented as modules in the plot, so that the narrative of events is
not presented in a chronological but logical order. Such a narrative is built up
from sequence modules, as in millennial nonlinear film narratives where the
plot starts from a fixed point from which different plot alternatives branch
out in the narrative (for example in Kieslowski’s Blind Chance or Tykwer’s
Run Lola Run). Another type of branching narrative is the presentation of
alternatives episode by episode (e.g., Howitt’s Sliding Doors) (Bordwell, 2012).
Branching narratives also appear in series, for example in HBO’s The Affair.
Alexander (2011) identifies a new form of digital narrative creation at the
intersection of social media and gaming, and uses McCloud’s (1994) notion
of sequences instead of modules to describe the nature of digital storytelling;
like comics, narratives in a digital environment are sequential in nature, being
constructed from temporal fragments. The modular-sequential narrative
structure (which allows for flexibility in branching), puzzle narratives and