Browsing by Subject "Authenticity"

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Children's and adults' conceptions of authentic objects and the role of authenticity in learning
(2016-08) Miller, Brooke Jessica; Woolley, Jacqueline D.; Bigler, Rebecca; Echols, Catherine; Reeves, Lauretta; Owen, Pamela; Seales, Chad
Questions concerning the level of authenticity of an object are of primary importance in many fields. For historians, archeologists, and museum workers, such questions go hand in hand with the way objects are usually found: broken, discolored, and of unknown origin. Even so, psychological research on authenticity tends to ignore the idea that authenticity is not a ‘perfect’ feature within an object, instead presenting a false dichotomy between completely authentic and completely inauthentic objects. In a series of studies the following questions were addressed: (1) How do children compare and contrast objects with different kinds of authenticity, (2) What qualities must an object have in order for children and adults to consider it to be authentic, and (3) What role might authenticity play in learning as it relates to exposure to authentic versus inauthentic objects? These questions were addressed in three studies that make up this dissertation.
Children’s reasoning about violations of authenticity
(2012-12) Schepp, Brooke Jessica; Woolley, Jacqueline D.; Bigler, Rebecca; Markman, Art
When do children begin to realize that the authenticity of an object is not inherent to an object itself, but instead depends on the information one has about the object in question? In two studies I investigated elementary school children’s reasoning about authenticity violations. How we reason about authenticity violations, or cases in which the purported history of an item is shown to be false, is important in that it provides an example of how people can reason about the underlying, non-obvious features of objects. Participants (N= 64, ages 7-9) were first asked to rate the value of a series of everyday objects using a Likert scale (one to ten). Next, information about the individual history of these objects was presented and participants were asked to re-rate them and provide explanations for their ratings. Using a between-subjects design, participants were then informed that the information they had been given about the objects’ histories was the result of intentional deception (Study One) or a mistake (Study Two) and were again asked to re-rate the objects and provide explanations for their ratings. Results from value ratings and explanations from both studies indicate that elementary school children are sensitive to the authentic nature of objects as well as intentional and accidental violations of authenticity. I propose that reasoning about associative essences, a novel term described in this paper, can be productively examined using violation of authenticity paradigms, providing insight into the development of reasoning about authenticity.
Costume and “the copy” : defining authenticity in the analogue original, the reproduction, and the digital garment within the museum and archive
(2013-08) Morena, Jill Kristine; Galloway, Patricia Kay
A comparative examination of the original and reproduction Gone With the Wind costumes at the Harry Ransom Center is at the heart of this study, which proposes to trace the relationship between the analogue original costume, the replica garment, and the digital image reproduction. A discussion of definitions of authenticity and “the original” within such areas as conservation, film studies, and audience perception explores the questions: what is the role of the reproduction, and can it challenge the authority and “aura” of the original? This inquiry illustrates that authenticity is negotiated; it is not always fixed in a clear line ranging from “the real thing” on one side to “the copy” on the other. The study concludes with examining digital image reproductions of costume. The online digital database record can potentially reveal more than a face-to-face encounter with the object in a gallery space, illuminating the biography and history of the garment, changes in curatorial decisions and exhibition practice, and the experience of tactility and embodiment.
Curating the self on social media and perceptions of authenticity : an exploratory study
(2017-05) Marom, Danielle; Pounders, Kathrynn
This thesis examines the perception of authenticity of the self and others in a social media context. The field of communication, as well as other relevant fields such as Sociology and Advertising, holds Goffman’s work as a seminal theoretical framework that continues to guide modern scholarly inquiry. This work uses his theoretical framework to help explain self-presentation as it unfolds in computer-mediated communication (CMC) contexts, specifically in the case of Social Networking Sites (SNS). Using an online survey, this study recruited participants to complete measures that tap into the dependent and independent variables. Specifically, this study examines and explores authenticity and its relationships to social trust, social comparison, and overall self-presentation on social media. Perceptions of authenticity online appear to play an increasingly growing role in social media, and examining variables that appear related, such as social trust and social comparison, can help us understand how these perceptions are functional and relevant in today’s online world.
Enduring character : the problem with authenticity and the persistence of ethos
(2013-12) Dieter, Eric Matthew, 1976-; Roberts-Miller, Patricia, 1959-
This dissertation is interested in how people talk about character in a variety of public spheres. Specifically, it explores the tangled relationship between authenticity and ethos, or what is taken as the distinction between intrinsic and constructed character. While this dissertation does not presume to settle the question of authenticity’s actuality, it does discuss the ways authenticity cues in rhetorical acts continue to influence how “sincere character” in those acts is understood, even as audiences exhibit shrewdness in recognizing that character is a purposeful manifestation of the rhetor. The fundamental phenomenon this dissertation seeks to describe is how people, with better and worse success, negotiate the dissonance between valuing character as authentic and as presentation and representation. Character in this view is a much richer and more paradoxical concept than many discussions of the term admit. A too-diluted study of ethos limited strictly to pinpointing credibility in an argument makes it difficult to articulate why an exhibition of character sometimes works and sometimes flops. Ethos in its fullest complexity is, and is not, constructed by any single act; it is the consequence of narratives, both of those narratives, and also what we say about those narratives; it is something we know about a rhetor, at the same time that it comes from what the rhetor claims to know; it is, most important, an appeal to authenticity, even when we know ethos is discursively, kairotically, and socially constructed. This dissertation offers an expanded definition of ethos as rhetorical transactions that rhetors and audiences mutually negotiate in order to determine the extent to which all sides will have their rhetorical needs met, and the extent to which all sides can assent to the those needs. The dissertation, using the works of Wayne Booth, Kenneth Burke, and Chaïm Perelman as its primary theoretical structures, offers pedagogic implications for these mutual negotiations.
A game of confidence : literary dialect, linguistics, and authenticity
(2011-08) Leigh, Philip John; Barrish, Phillip
A Game of Confidence: Literary Dialect, Linguistics, and Authenticity builds a bridge between literary-critical and linguistic approaches to representations of nonstandard speech in literature. Important scholarship both in linguistics and in literary criticism has sought to develop rigorous inquiry into deviations from standard written language to represent features of nonstandard spoken language in literature. I argue that neither field, however, has fully embraced the idea that, by definition, 'literary dialect' necessitates an interdisciplinary approach. Furthermore, neither has successfully integrated the other's very different theories and methods. As a result, 'literary dialect' provides an exciting opportunity for new scholarship connecting recent developments in literary history, sociolinguistics, and digital humanities. The goals of my project are two-fold: First, to analyze within their own cultural and historical contexts previous attempts by authors, readers, and scholars to fix the supposedly empirical accuracy of literary dialect representations; second, to model what I take to be an empirically more valid use of linguistics for analyzing literary artists' representations of nonstandard speech. My work provides a necessary intervention for literary dialect criticism, particularly for the many arguments that have sought a degree of objectivity for assertions about the artistic or socio-political merits of a dialect text based on vague linguistic generalizations. My dissertation's primary focus is on the period that has served historically as the locus classicus for scholarship on American dialect literature: The second half of the nineteenth century when local colorists, regionalists, and realists used 'real' American voices as the foundation for a realistic American literature. By analyzing the production and historical reception of literary dialect texts from this period I show how assessments of 'authenticity' have been a constant in the critical response to these texts for nearly a century and a half. Having underscored the critical problems inherent in linking artistic and political evaluations of dialect texts to the 'authenticity' of their literary dialects, I then draw on recent developments in the digital humanities, computational linguistics, and sociolinguistics to employ a methodology for generating and interpreting literary-linguistic data on literary dialects.
How perceptions impact real estate decisions : an analysis of residential demand in Austin, Texas
(2015-12) Fulmer, Kristen Alyse; Atkinson, Simon, Ph. D.; Wegmann, Jacob
This thesis examines how social media trends create perceptions, which influence real estate decision-making within the Millennial generation, ultimately affecting their long-term investment and longevity in the city of Austin, Texas. To investigate the residential real estate market in Austin, specifically within the Millennial generation, I discuss decision factors with the residents and developers, known as stakeholders. By completing a mixed-methods analysis, I determine how Internet-based tendencies affect perceptions and economic realities of specific neighborhoods or the city, thereby affecting the residential real estate market as a whole. Approaching this research as a post-positivist, I hypothesize that the Millennial cohort is currently creating short-term demand for residential development with no long-term intentions of staying in the city. By discovering this future instability of sectors within the Millennial generation, especially in newcomers to the city, I question Austin’s plans, which seem to lack amenities to provide for this cohort’s residential longevity.
I thought we weren't in Spain : the emergence of authenticity in a foreign language classroom
(2014-05) Whitehead, Sarah Jey; Palmer, Deborah K., 1969-; Callahan, Rebecca M; De Lissovoy, Noah; Horwitz, Elaine K; Urlaub, Per
This study is based upon the idea that foreign language (FL) classrooms exist apart from their target language communities. While historically, this has been a geographic truth, divides between FL learners and native speakers may also reflect symbolic social distance. Given the symbolic, if not geographic, isolation of the FL classroom from the real world, this study presumes that a challenge inherent to the endeavor of FL education is that the authentic, real-world language and culture under study are, by definition, not naturally present in the FL classroom. This study considers how this challenge, referred to as the challenge of authenticity, is managed in one FL classroom. Seven eighth-grade students and their teacher comprise Classroom 204, a beginning Spanish FL classroom at a private school in the southwest U.S. This qualitative case study uses classroom observations, audio-recordings, classroom artifacts, and participant interviews as data to consider not only how authenticity is imported, imagined, and conjured by participants in Classroom 204, but how authenticity is assigned value therein. Data is analyzed largely with discourse analysis of transcripts of classroom talk about (and classroom talk that constituted) various facets of authenticity, value, and the real world. Ecology theory serves as a broad theoretical lens through which to understand (and accept) the complexity inherent to the social phenomena being researched. Benedict Anderson's (1991) theory of imagined communities is adopted to understand the boundaries that delineate the inside of the FL classroom from the outside, and Bourdieu's (1992) notion of symbolic capital is used to understand the ways by which authenticity becomes valuable (and, conversely, how that which is valuable becomes authentic). Findings suggest that, while participants are largely oriented to real-world manifestations of Spanish language and culture, authenticity is not most present in Classroom 204 in the form of stuff imported from elsewhere. Rather, authenticity emerges out of the highly local, socially-immediate interactions and value systems unique to Classroom 204. Suggestions for both pedagogy and future research focus on approaches that acknowledge and capitalize on the power of local authenticity in the FL classroom, as cultivated by local social actors.
Re-braiding our neglected kin : Urban Indigenous young adults fumbling to belong in the Twin Cities
(2023-12) Gaskill, Joseph James; Strong, Pauline Turner, 1953-
In this report, I illuminate the stories of nine Urban Native and Indigenous young adults navigating the complexities of claiming their Indigeneity. My goal is to showcase how young adults in the Twin Cities cannot belong as their full genuine selves, because of a normalized reality of neglect they embody from their community. Neglect that is fueled by forms of purity-centered authenticity that are internalized and carefully maintained to establish a specific foundation of how one must be, look, and perform their Indigeneity to belong. Emerging across generations of dehumanized Indigenous identity and the preservation of our lifeways in the west, this has created the particularistic forms of relation for what it means to be a “real” and “authentic” Native and Indigenous person that our Urban kin are propelled to strive towards as subjects to formulate our identities, but can never become. Yet, our many diverse mixed and multiethnic, queer, urban and suburban, and reconnecting young people navigate and continually resist this embodied neglect by following their joys and dreams of expanding belonging. I have come to understand this neglect and methods of navigating its limits through ethnographic interviews, observations, and community organizing work with young adults and older community members during the summer of 2023. I collected the narratives of diverse Indigenous young adults that illuminate the fumbling journeys of identity development and belonging that they face as neglected kin in their communities. This allowed me to understand more intimately the limits of belonging and relation in the Twin Cities Indigenous communities that have left young adults with various feelings of neglect as afterthoughts to their community’s relational capacities, and internalized doubt in living up to limiting expectations of Indigeneity to find belonging. Yet despite these struggles to belong, we young adults also show how following diverse avenues of self-expression and dreams push ourselves and our future kin to expand the possibilities and definitions of Indigeneity to build better, more fluidly accepting worlds of belonging today to resist these forms of subjecting Indigenous bodies, minds, and spirits to care only for an identity defined by purity-centered authenticity.
Revealing authentic intention as a director
(2018-05-03) Schmidt, Graham Thomas; Sanchez, K. J.
In this thesis, I describe a model for theater directing inspired by an intimate moment in my life. I use the term “authentic” to describe this model, since its features spring from the core of my being, and align with prevailing definitions of authenticity: “true to one's own personality, spirit, or character.” I then use this model to analyze the ways authenticity manifested through three directing projects I pursued as an MFA candidate, and factors hindering expression of my authentic directorial voice.
Street cred : are media consumers craving more “authenticity” in the digital age?
(2018-06-27) Schulz, George Warren; Brenner, R. B. (Robert B.)
Media organizations that provide news have traditionally relied on audience perceptions of truth and credibility to lure more readers, viewers, and listeners. The author explores whether authenticity has emerged in the digital age as an additional ingredient in media consumers’ daily decisions about where to turn – and where to return – for trustworthy information. As it becomes ever-more of a challenge for consumers to distinguish reliable information from “fake news” in the 21st century, audiences may be seeking content from media organizations that feels more authentic, genuine, and personalized. Three case studies drawn from new media, as well as legacy media, help illustrate what traditional and startup media institutions can do to better understand audience attitudes and behaviors: the HBO series “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” the online site Reddit, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold.
The struggle for authenticity : blues, race, and rhetoric
(2011-05) Gatchet, Roger Davis; Gunn, Joshua, 1973-; Brummett, Barry; Cloud, Dana; Fuller, Jennifer; Maxwell, Madeline
The concept of authenticity has been central to the human capacity to communicate for over two millennia, and it continues to enjoy wide usage throughout popular culture today. “Authenticity” typically conveys a sense that one has reached solid bedrock, the unchanging foundation of an object or inner-self that transcends the context of the moment. In this sense, the search or struggle for authenticity is a quest for VIP access to the ineffable “real” that language can only inadequately gesture toward. This study investigates the contemporary struggle for authenticity, or what can be described as the “rhetoric of authenticity,” by exploring the way authenticity is negotiated, constructed, and contested through various symbolic resources. More specifically, it focuses on how authenticity is negotiated in the U.S. blues community, a complex cultural site where the struggle over authenticity is especially salient and materializes in a variety of complex ways. Drawing on a number of philosophical perspectives and critical theories, the study employs the methods of rhetorical criticism and oral history as it seeks to answer three central questions: First, what are the major rhetorical dimensions of authenticity? Second, what does rhetorical analysis reveal about the relationship between authenticity and its various signifiers? And third, what does our desire for authenticity teach us about ourselves as symbol-using creatures? The study employs a case study approach that moves inductively in order to discover the larger rhetorical dimensions of authenticity. The case studies examine the relationship between authenticity and the blues’ larger historical trajectory; between aesthetics and authenticity in the oral history narratives of professional blues musicians in Austin, Texas, especially as they converge along a style/substance binary; between identity and authenticity in the editorial policy of Living Blues magazine; and finally, between imitation and authenticity in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. The study concludes by exploring how authenticity is contextual, aesthetic, ideological, and political, and frames a rhetorical theory of authenticity that can be applied widely throughout popular culture.
The forensics of recognition : hijra gender authentication in Bangladesh
(2018-05-04) Ng, Daniel Kevin; Strong, Pauline Turner, 1953-
In many parts of South Asia hijras designate a group of male-bodied feminine-identified people whom are traditionally believed to have the spiritual power to confer fertility onto newlywed couples and newborn infants. In November of 2013, the Government of Bangladesh announced a policy decision to officially recognize the hijra community as a third gender. It was followed soon thereafter by an expansion in government-sponsored social welfare programming targeting the hijra community. Arguably the most notable among these official efforts to mainstream and “rehabilitate” the hijra community came in the spring of 2015 when the Ministry of Social Welfare announced that it would be offering low-ranking government positions to fourteen hijras. However, of the hijras originally appointed to these positions, twelve were disqualified after an official forensic medical test deemed them to be “fully male” (i.e. their male genitalia were found intact), despite resounding claims of their legitimacy and authenticity within the hijra community. Upon hearing the results of these tests, the ministry immediately terminated the appointments of all the candidates on the basis that they were “in fact” a group of men who had come impersonating hijras to acquire government employment. The shock and indignation of the hijra community occasioned by these events raises critical questions about what it means to be hijra in Bangladesh today. In this paper, I argue that the forensics of recognition offers a productive way to think through and make sense of these complicated dynamics of hijra recognition in postcolonial Bangladesh. By forensics of recognition I refer to not only the fact that a state-run forensics department was enlisted in the aid of an official attempt to verify the authentic gender identity of a group of hijras. I also mean to highlight the various affects, interests, actors, and technologies that both mobilize and get mobilized as a result of processes of recognition and that take as their central concern the discovery of truth, the detection and analysis of material traces, and the production and presentation of evidence in public fora.
The past in the present : rock ideology and canon in the 1980s
(2022-06-24) Durham, Hannah Lee; Carson, Charles D. (Charles Daniel); Lewis, Hannah; Dell'Antonio, Andrew; Buhler, James; Nehring, Neil
By the 1980s, much rock writing and other rock media were, in various degrees, participating in a “heritage discourse,” with roots in Romantic and Modernist ideologies, in which there was a noticeable preoccupation with a past “golden age” of musicians, albums, musical instruments and technology. The nostalgic mood was bolstered by the new compact disc format which resulted in a spate of album reissues and new boxed sets, along with the advent of the classic rock radio format in 1983. Although ideas of a rock canon had been intimated since at least 1970, rock critics in the 1980s seemed to organize around an established rock canon in various ways. During this decade, there emerged two general definitional orientations concerning rock music—one rigid and the other broad and more inclusive—which affected the ways rock media and audiences assigned value to different music. This dissertation aims to investigate the ways in which rock criticism in the 1980s, discourses of authenticity, and questions of genre boundaries have worked to emphasize and deemphasize certain music to attempt cohesive historical memory for rock music, and while doing so, confront rock’s definitional instability imparted by past mythmaking. In the 1980s, David Bowie and Joni Mitchell were already multi-decade recording artists and performers with international audiences, and both were already associated with a rock canon. Much of their work from the 1980s, however, was critically deemed mediocre, or worse, “bad.” The album case studies in this dissertation—Bowie’s band Tin Machine’s eponymous album (1989) and Joni Mitchell’s Dog Eat Dog (1985)—examine the various ways passé and untenable discourses of authenticity influence the reception of recordings after a certain “era” in a musician’s career arc. Moreover, each album presents unique sonic and representational problems when considering questions of genre and style in rock music.
Tourism and representations in Morocco : the mediation of authenticity through language, interaction, and video
(2004-08-16) Wagner, Lauren (Social Scientist); Keating, Elizabeth Lillian
This thesis considers the use of video technology as a medium of representational practice when in contact with tourism as a medium of representational practice. First, I will address tourism as a field of designed performance in which local agents are participating in representations that reflect a market force that extends outside the local. Then, I will examine the session I observed and recorded of a professional crew videotaping one of the tourism agents, looking at the steps involved in producing a mass media representation. Finally, I will relate the ideologies and practices of my own data collection as a linguistic anthropologist and as a videographer, looking at observational video data as a representational practice shaped by ideologies of ethnography. For this analysis, I will be drawing on prior personal experience as a film industry professional alongside my more recent training a social scientist. As context for these representational strategies, I will present my experiences of the tourism economy in Morocco, framed by the concept of authenticity as the guiding framework for the tourism market
What makes social media influencers authentic? Understanding perceived authenticity of social media influencers
(2020-08-17) Lee, Jung Ah (Ph. D. in advertising); Eastin, Matthew S.; Bright, Laura F; Brown-Devlin, Natalie; Johnson, Thomas J; Oh, Jeeyun
This research explores how consumers’ perception of social media influencers’ (SMI) authenticity is constructed. To that end, a measurement scale that hinges on consumers’ authenticity cues is developed to delve into the structure of perceived SMI authenticity. Additionally, the role of perceived SMI authenticity on consumer behavior variables is examined. To develop and validate the scale, a mixed methods research design is used in which qualitative responses were collected via an open-ended survey and quantitative data were collected via two online surveys. Results suggest perceived SMI authenticity is a multidimensional construct consisting of: Sincerity, Transparent Endorsements, Visibility, Expertise and Uniqueness. Each of the five dimensions had varying effects on consumers’ evaluation of a SMI, willingness to follow a SMI and intention to purchase products they recommend. This research extends theoretical work on authenticity by shedding light onto the construct of perceived SMI authenticity and provides practical implications for marketers and social media influencers.
White bodies, black voices : the linguistic construction of racialized authenticity in US film
(2012-05) Lopez, Qiuana La'teese; Hinrichs, Lars; Epps, Patience, 1973-; Beavers, John; Chun, Elaine; Crowhurst, Megan; Green, Lisa; Lanehart, Sonja
By examining the range of stances that white characters in Hollywood films are represented as taking in relation to blackness, this dissertation considers the question of how language becomes ideologically linked to categories of race through linguistic representations. Through an analysis of 59 films (1979-2008) from multiple genres, this study focuses on the linguistic practices of the characters that contribute to larger semiotic practices performed by discernible social types. The first linguistic practice, crossing, plays on the stereotype of the inauthentic, white male, who tries to gain coolness through linguistic representations of African Americans. The second practice, passing, conjures images of blackface because in addition to using linguistic representations of African Americans, the passing characters darken their skin. By demonstrating complex links between language and social meanings such as ideologies about authenticity, identity and racial and gendered stereotypes, these films use linguistic features along with other visual and physical semiotic displays to both construct and comment on black and white authenticity. Specifically, crossing was found to comment on disseminated images of the young, white male as lacking a particular type of masculinity and sexuality and overcompensating for them by imitating widely circulating images of the hypermasculine, hypersexual and hyperphysical black male. In addition, it commented on the tendency to read this linguistic practice as inauthentic. Therefore, the social meaning of the white linguistic representations of African Americans used when crossing was found to be related to authenticity or who had the right to use ethnically-marked linguistic features. On the other hand, passing was argued to communicate the ideologies that some whites may have of African Americans, particularly African American men. The linguistic resources utilized in these performances are not used to form identity, but for humor and to distance the character from being read as traditional minstrelsy. By highlighting some of the linguistic strategies that speakers in Hollywood use to (re)produce not only indexical links between linguistic forms and racialized stereotypes but also ideologies about racial authenticity, this dissertation provides an empirical study of some of the semiotic practices that involve the re-indexicalization of minority vernacular resources by members of the majority.