DiSCourse Seminar with Khalid Durani
07 November 2025, 12:00 (CET), hybrid
Digital Science Center, Innrain 15, 1st floor, Open Space Area or Big Blue Button
DiSCourse - The Digital Science Seminar Series on:
From Simulation to Hyperreality: The Role of Simulacra in Visual Formats in the News Production and Consumption Process by Citizen Journalists
Social media empowers ordinary citizens to act as citizen journalists, thereby challenging the traditional role of the institutional press. Despite its empowering potential, citizen journalism can also engender adverse consequences, such as the proliferation of misinformation. Drawing on Baudrillard, we argue that news production and consumption by citizen journalists foster hyperreality. From this theoretical perspective, social media simulates reality through simulacra (e.g., digital images) that are perceived as more authentic than physical reality itself. Baudrillard delineates this phenomenon by distinguishing four phases of simulacra. Using this taxonomy, we conducted a semiotic analysis of simulacra shared on Reddit during the Israel–Hamas War. Based on our findings, we introduce a theoretical framework that explains the distinct yet interrelated roles of simulacra within this news ecosystem and their influence on citizen journalists’ engagement. In the first phase, citizen journalists demonstrate reactive engagement, whereby simulacra magnify specific aspects of physical reality. In the second phase, citizen journalists interrogate simulacra to uncover perceived injustices and validate ideological beliefs, thereby reframing reality. At the third phase, citizen journalists help conjure hyperreal representations—simulacra that superimpose on physical reality—effectively creating new realities.
Khalid Durani, University of Innsbruck, Department of Information Systems, Production and Logistics Management
Khalid Durani is a postdoctoral researcher, who integrates theories from philosophy and psychology to explore the ethical and political dimensions of digitalization. His research focuses on two core areas: the use of digital technologies and their design and development. In examining technology use, he investigates evolving communication patterns on digital platforms, with a particular emphasis on visual information exchanges (e.g., digital images and videos) during societal crises. His work also addresses the normative implications of personal data digitalization and the ethical challenges posed by generative artificial intelligence. In the realm of design and development, he explores how digital technologies can be created ethically, with an emphasis on the resolution of value conflicts and the mitigation of oppressive or marginalizing effects. Khalid is the winner of the Award for Digitalization Research 2025 in the dissertation category.