I started this research project in 2018, frustrated by what I saw as signs of collapsing communication on social media platforms – that people weren’t listening, and that information wasn’t trusted.

Read about the media background of the project in the text “NUMB” in the office.

Since then – potentially intensified during the Covid-years, where physical contact was replaced by an even greater online presence – the situation seems to have grown worse. The period of the Trump presidency, with its repeated accusations about fake news, fraud and lies, hasn’t helped. We have experienced the growth of cancel culture and an even stronger polarisation of views. Attacks on people seem to have become fiercer. One such example is the situation evolving after J. K. Rowling, the author of the popular “Harry Potter” books, tweeted her views on transwomen. This resulted not only in criticism but also in book burning and death threats. People wanted her ‘cancelled’ (The Independent 2022). Where I previously saw numbness and fatigue, I increasingly now see aggression and fear.

Can’t we agree to disagree any more? People are losing their jobs because of opinions they hold, although their views are not related to their professional careers (Siddique 2022). Literature is being re-examined and edited to remove anything that might offend, and a lot of content is now presented with trigger warnings – as much to avoid criticism as to prevent offending (Vernon 2023). I was asked to consider inserting a trigger warning in this doctoral work because it includes the topic of Children Born of War and abuse towards children.

Righteous crusaders

Do we now need to be warned and shielded from discussions about human suffering because the topic might be difficult? It has become potentially dangerous to utter one’s own opinions. This development leads to silencing (Dotson 2011). It also follows that the only utterances that seem safe are those that are considered to be ‘true’ by a large enough community.

Instead of having open discussions, we pound each other with our alternative truths, and nuances are lost. The concept of ‘truth’ is the binary opposite of false, meaning that anything that isn’t true is wrong and the result of either ignorance or ill intent. This absolute nature of truth makes us feel righteous. Being hateful can make people feel good and motivate further crusading (Minor 2018). Being ‘in the right’ is also rewarded with the safety of belonging to a group, which makes it socially hard to change our minds – to join those with ‘ill intent’. Expressing doubt about disputed topics demands courage.

The feeling of trust

The concept of ‘truth’ vs ‘lie’ is an objectification and simplification that hides nuances and alternate views. ‘Truth’ can more precisely be described as a conclusion we decide upon based on our rationality, which again is governed by our beliefs and wishes (Stanovich 2010). We choose our personal truths when we analyse our surroundings and the information we receive. In this process, we also consider whether we feel that we can trust the information itself and its source.

In this way, our emotions steer what we think is true. The same goes for all knowledge, which can be described as the most reliable current interpretation of an issue based on the methodology that was used to create it. Different epistemological traditions produce different truths – with the Western epistemological tradition dominating the way in which we think today, silencing other epistemological traditions (Held 2020).

Relationships, not media productions

This means that our ‘truths’ are based on our trust. Trust is not a binary or a constant. It is a feeling that can grow or diminish, affected by reliability and freedom (Simpson 2007). It is a measure of the quality of our relationships, and it changes over time. High levels of trust indicate that a relationship is safe enough to allow us to discuss and openly express doubt without risking criticism. It makes it possible to be open to listening to new ideas, and makes it safe enough for us to change our minds.

Trust is therefore both at the root of our currently polarised societies and the remedy that can help us to change things for the better. Our non-fiction media content needs to be better at building trustworthy relationships in order to motivate open reflection and to create a basis for change. This also means that the creators should think of the media production as an element that facilitates a dialogue between themselves and the experience’s participants. The processing of a media experience creates a user journey over time that influences the relationship that is created between the participant and the creator.

Generating trust through agency

One of the results of this artistic research process is my newfound belief that interactive storyshaping holds unexplored promise when it comes to communicating non-fiction content in ways that are more likely to generate trust.

Read more about the outcome of my artistic research process in the text “These rooms for thoughs” in the living room.

Interactive experiences invite the participant to actively engage, and necessitate personal decision-making by the participant. These experiences are most often explored individually, thereby creating room for reflection where ideas can be explored without fear of being observed by others. The interactions can present complex issues that motivate challenging, ethical reflection. And crucially, the participant can influence the experience with their own ideas, and receive responses that can introduce further nuances to the topic.

I believe that such experiences can encourage critical thinking and build confidence in personal decision-making processes. We need to create room between people for ideas that transcend today’s dominant polarisation, that help to build resilience, and that make it easier to stand up to the pressures of group-think and cancel culture.

Openings for new explorations

In my opinion, our traditional forms of communication for non-fiction issues need to be re-examined in the context of a world that is suffering from a crisis of trust. What were previously one-directional formats are now distributed on collaborative platforms and viewed by people who are accustomed to being able to interact and respond. This has changed the relationship between creator and audience. By comparison, our interactive formats are relatively new, and are less used for non-fiction content. However, they are more relational in their nature and contain unexplored affordances for motivating and building trust.

Understanding emotion-generation

We need to develop a new toolbox and analytical tools to help creators to present non-fiction content in a way that can more efficiently break down the obstacles that make it hard to reflect freely.

A useful starting point is the field of user experience (UX), which is where the term ‘user journey’ originated. In fields such as IT development, sales or marketing, the user journey is seen as one part of a wider relationship between the user and an application, a product or a brand. ‘Customer experience’ is defined as a “multidimensional construct focusing on a customer's cognitive, emotional, behavioral, sensorial, and social responses to a firm’s offerings during the customer’s entire purchase journey” (Lemon and Verhoef 2016). It is just such a multidimensional approach that I believe we need in order to understand the potential for trust-building in media experiences, examining the relationship between the participant and the creator. In game design, the ‘user experience’ focuses on the participant’s relationship with the experience only, measuring the reaction to interfaces and gameplay.

As the emotion of trust is so important in the creation of open reflection to generate change, analysis of media productions must include both these perspectives: the emotions generated by the work itself, and the emotions connected to the developing relationship between the participant and the work’s creator. These two perspectives must also be explored with regard to how they develop over time.

These are aspects that need further exploration in order to understand how they affect trust-generation for experiences that communicate non-fiction issues in order to generate change:

The emotion-generating aspects of the work itself:

The artistic, audiovisual expression: Art generates emotions

Language: The choice of words, tone or mode generates emotions

Framing of the participant: The narrative role given to the participant generates emotions

Addition for interactive experiences:

Interactions: The level to which the interactions are meaningful and relevant, and the freedom the participant is given to choose a user journey that reflects their personal morality, generate emotions

Body language: The body language of other characters and the way in which the participant’s avatar is presented and positioned throughout an interactive experience generates emotions

Agency: The overall freedom the participant is offered to influence the complete user journey generates emotions

The emotion-generating aspects of the relationship between creator and participant:

Perceived intent: Does the work offer transparency concerning the position of the creator? Does it invite, welcome and motivate, signalling an interest in the participant’s reflection and opening for co-creation? Is the participant offered the freedom to easily opt out at any time?

Reliability: Is the impression consistent over time, or does the relationship change?

Bias: Has the effect of biases from the creator or participant been analysed and mitigated?

I also hope that a better understanding of the ways in which these factors influence the participant will make it possible to create the kind of trusting, open room for reflection that Theodore Adorno calls “a state of difference without domination” (Adorno 1998).

Beyond empathy

I also wish to continue to explore the concept of ”Otherself”, where I attempt to give the participant a user journey that is mainly comprised of their own internal journey of reflection when choosing, reacting and responding. I believe that choices made because of stimulation instead of being triggered as responses to a pre-planned storyline have a different emotional effect, going beyond the empathy that can be created by simulation. Are we more inclined to change our minds and behaviour when we understand more about ourselves than when we can identify with other humans?

The emotional language of humanity

These further openings and questions can be summed up as a wish to explore how we, as humans, can create greater understanding for each other by having a better grasp of the ways in which we are guided by our emotions. This includes accepting that there are no such things as ‘emotionless, cold logic’ or ‘objective truth’, and that the emotions and intentions behind our knowledge need to be considered.

This is especially urgent today. We are currently at the start of yet another paradigm shift. We know that our societies will be changed significantly by the spread of artificial intelligence. This is a tool that can be used for good, but it can also be the ultimate tool for disinformation and manipulation.

We also know that human emotions are the one thing that AI will never be fully capable of understanding. Our emotions are the result both of our reflections and of our physical bodies. Trust is affected both by other people’s reasoning and by the way in which we experience their body language. Human empathy is created by recognising ourselves in others, and can motivate selfless sacrifice.

Our emotions are humanity’s strength, and our ability to understand them in order to communicate non-fiction issues to motivate change is more important than ever.