Abstract
When visual evidence is shown in court, specific features of the media employed and jurors’ experiences with those media in their everyday lives affect their responses. Computer animations can depict what film or video cannot record, but precisely because animations can depict anything whatever, their truthfulness can be questioned. Yet animations also share key features with film and video that encourage belief: the flow of images diverts viewers from the details of any single frame, and movement itself enhances verisimilitude. Jurors’ experiences of seeing animations as news and as science and of interacting with computer games can imbue evidentiary animations with added credibility. Appreciating these aspects of the medium can help all participants in legal proceedings to better assess the persuasive benefits and judgemental risks of courtroom animations.
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Notes
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Spiesel, C., Battye, G., Feigenson, N. (2017). Animating the Bomber: The Sydney Bomber Trial. In: Tait, D., Goodman-Delahunty, J. (eds) Juries, Science and Popular Culture in the Age of Terror. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55475-8_4
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