What does a document do? Contextual information as an antidote for disinformation and manipulation

Documents of any type (written, visual, audio-visual, etc.) provide important access to an understanding of past and present reality. However, they never literally reflect such reality, but are always biased: their author produces a document from a specific perspective (gender, socio-economic, cultural or political) for a certain target audience with a certain goal in mind. A document therefore not only says something, but also wants to do something – that cannot be found literally in the document. In order to analyse, interpret and understand a document properly, information about its context of origin and author is indispensable. A real document can otherwise lead to disinformation or even to manipulation.