Exercise 3
Jürgen Schaflechner reported in his interview about the discrepancy between curated online representations and what was found in real-life settings. Read the excerpt where he explains this discrepancy with an example.
Example 2: Excerpt from an interview with Jürgen Schaflechner on his research with Muslim actors in Pakistan
Jürgen Schaflechner: I will try to clarify this with an example while avoiding too many details for privacy reasons. There was a case of a woman who was allegedly forcibly converted to Islam. A video of her went viral in certain online communities. It was heart-wrenching to watch – she was crying and calling her parents, pleading to be rescued and brought home. I visited this woman and her family multiple times over the months and was eventually able to see how this video came into being. At some point, I had the opportunity to watch the full video. And when you see the entire footage, beyond just the viral Twitter clip, you realize what was happening behind the scenes.
In the full video, you can see 10-, 12-, or 14-year-old boys holding the only smartphone in the family. They climbed onto a rooftop across from where the woman was being recorded, giving her very clear, deliberate instructions: ‘Say it again, say it louder, now here, again.’
This entire video (which must, of course, remain anonymized) shows how the community skillfully staged the video to make it go viral.”
How does the virtual representation compare to the making-of of the video?
The viral video on social media shows a woman crying and pleading with her parents to rescue her. What the video does not show is the group of young boys filming her, carefully instructing her on what to say and how to act. This was not an authentic recording of a real-life event but rather a deliberate staging designed to go viral online.