Abstract
Documents can be understood as containers for information that enable remote communication between people across space and time. They are therefore fundamentally subject to issues of trust. The theoretical treatment of documents as a means of remote communication has a long history and has arrived in the age of electronic document exchange, as shown by the work of R. T. Pédauque, which is taken as a starting point here.
To take theory further, form-based documents are discussed here as an example. Form-based documents control the information provided by fillers by specifying form fields. The core of this paper is to compare a filling-in situation for a document displayed on a screen or printed on paper with uncontrolled natural language utterances. The parameters defined by the form fields are then anchored in the actual completion process, which determines the referential realism of the completed form and the specific referential trust required in the accuracy of the information.
Our description model for form-like factual documents uses situation theoretical means. These are played out using the prominent example of the birth certificate of Barack Obama II, which was subjected to many expressions of distrust.
Recommended Citation
Schmidt, Karl-Heinrich and Schlupkothen, Frederik
(2025)
"Trusted forms—The Case of Barack Obama’s Birth Certificate,"
Proceedings from the Document Academy: Vol. 12
:
Iss.
2
, Article 18.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.35492/docam/12/2/12
Available at:
https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/docam/vol12/iss2/18
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.35492/docam/12/2/12
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