Workshop "The Scandalization of Narratives in (Anti-) Social Media"
This 1-day workshop will explore the mechanics behind the scandalization of narratives in various forms of media. In today’s digital landscape, stories are increasingly shaped, amplified, and distorted by algorithms, fake news, and AI-generated content. These narratives often fuel outrage, spread misinformation, and manipulate public perception, posing serious challenges to truth, ethics, and democratic discourse. Participants will investigate how and why certain narratives become scandalized, what role media platforms play in this process, and the ethical implications of these dynamics. The workshop will also introduce practical strategies for reflecting on and countering the proliferation of fake and AI-generated narratives. Through case studies, interactive discussions, and collaborative exercises, participants will develop tools to critically assess media-driven stories and strengthen their narrative literacy in an age of digital manipulation.
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Dr. Deborah de Muijnck is a postdoctoral researcher and academic coordinator at Justus Liebig University Giessen, holding a PhD in English Literature from RWTH Aachen University (2022). She has been an institutional affiliate at Harvard University (2023) and has held research fellowships at the Universities of Graz (2024) and Stockholm (2026). Her research intersects narratology, medical humanities, and anglophone literary histories, with particular emphasis on narrative ethics and cultural change.
Her first monograph, Narrative Identity after Combat: The Cognitive and Cultural Work of Storytelling (Oxford University Press, fortcoming), examines the individual and collective functions of autobiographical, genre-aligned narration following traumatic experiences. She publishes widely on narratology in international venues, including Pandemic Storytelling (2025), Poetics of Disturbances (2024), and the Routledge Companion chapter “Narrative, Culture, Identity” (2025). Her second monograph develops a typology of literary scandals in Britain from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. Her work on literary scandals appears in leading international journals such as Style and Storyworlds, and she is the editor of the special issue Narratives of Scandal and Shock in Frontiers of Narrative Studies (Brill/De Gruyter, forthcoming). Her research has been supported by funding from the European Union (NextGenerationEU), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and the Martin Buber Society. |