Ethics of photo captions in Spain’s digital press: a didactic proposal

Abstract

In a digital world, multimedia data needs a clarifying text, as these documents offer polysemic interpretations. Hence, the texts work as support to further develop the image’s necessarily concise meaning. The captions in media websites typically appear in the news pages, not on covers, owing to the limited space available. In digital editions, multimedia documents have a function related to design, the need to attract attention and provide a link to the content. In this respect, we wonder whether opting for design doesn’t underestimate the actual information provided by the photo caption. This may be a matter of post truth, as it is increasingly complex to find true and accurate texts. Through this work, we reflect on the irruption of ICT and on the loss of information in communicative processes. The digital front pages of four newspapers are explored in search of captions that contextualize and clarify the multimedia’s polysemic quality. Our goal is for young people to have tools to assess the objectivity and subjectivity of journalistic texts. This didactic proposal presents a series of activities offered to verify whether rhetorical mechanisms – appropriate to argumentative and literary discourse – play a key role in identifying misinformation in the post-truth era.