Source and Composite Disclosure Card¶
Document — instantiates Narrative Transportation Persuasion Design
Labels whether details are real, anonymized, composite, dramatized, speculative, or illustrative.
A Source and Composite Disclosure Card is a compact, audience-facing label attached to a delivered story that states, for its salient details, what kind of truth each one is — a real person, an anonymized real person, a composite assembled from several, a dramatized reconstruction, a speculative "could happen," or a purely illustrative invention — and points the load-bearing claims back to their evidence. Its defining job is provenance: keeping a transported audience from mistaking a composite or a dramatization for a documented fact, so that the story's emotional force does not launder unearned authority into its claims. It says nothing about what the audience will object to; it only certifies what the story is.
Example¶
A nonprofit's fundraising film follows "Amara," a mother walking two hours to a clinic. The story is true to the population the charity serves, but "Amara" is a composite — her walk is one beneficiary's, her twins are another's, her closing line is scripted. Left unlabeled, the film implies a single documented individual, and a donor who later learns otherwise feels deceived, taking the whole cause down with the disappointment.
The disclosure card fixes the provenance without breaking the story. In the closing frames and on the campaign page, a short standardized label reads: composite character — details drawn from real beneficiaries, names and identifying features changed; the two-hour distance reflects the clinic's median catchment; dialogue dramatized. Where a statistic appears ("1 in 3 births here is unattended"), the card traces it to the source report. Nothing about Amara's emotional truth is retracted; what changes is that the audience now knows precisely which parts are documented and which are constructed — and can trust the film because it told them.
How it works¶
The card is a small, fielded artifact bound to the story, not a paragraph of fine print:
- Tag each salient detail with a status from a fixed vocabulary: real / anonymized / composite / dramatized / speculative / illustrative. A shared vocabulary is what makes the label legible at a glance.
- Trace the load-bearing claims. For facts, figures, and named events that do persuasive work, point to the evidence behind them.
- Set prominence to match stakes. Higher-stakes or more emotionally loaded stories carry more visible, more granular disclosure.
- Keep it out of the transportation. The card sits at the seams — open, close, caption, page — so it informs without narrating over the story.
Tuning parameters¶
- Granularity — one label for the whole story or a status per detail. Per-detail is honest but heavy; whole-story is light but can hide a crucial composite.
- Prominence — a quiet footer or an upfront frame. Upfront maximizes honesty but can cool transportation before it starts; buried maximizes immersion but shades into concealment.
- Vocabulary strictness — how sharply "composite" is distinguished from "dramatized" from "illustrative." Precise terms prevent the mushy "based on true events" that discloses nothing.
- Evidence-link depth — a bare citation or a traceable path to the underlying data. Deeper links armor the claims but cost effort and can clutter.
When it helps, and when it misleads¶
Its strength is preventing evidence laundering — the quiet transfer of a documentary's credibility onto invented or composited material — and preserving the trust a persuasive story spends. Honest provenance is also what lets a campaign use composites at all, which are often the only ethical way to protect vulnerable real subjects.[n1]
Its failure mode is disclosure that defeats itself: over-labeling every frame yanks the audience out of the storyworld and kills the transportation the story depends on, while the opposite failure — a vague "based on a true story" — technically discloses while actually revealing nothing. The classic misuse is burying composite or dramatized status in unreadable fine print to keep the emotional impact of implied literal truth. The guarding discipline is to disclose at the level of detail a reasonable audience would want if they knew to ask, placed where they will actually see it, in words precise enough to distinguish a real person from an assembled one.
How it implements the components¶
story_source_disclosure_note— its core output: the per-detail provenance label drawn from a fixed status vocabulary.truth_and_evidence_trace— links the story's load-bearing factual claims back to the evidence that supports them.
It does not design how the story meets audience objections: counterargument_integration_point and audience_prior_state_map belong to audience_counterargument_map — its document twin. The card labels the story's provenance; the map designs its objection-handling.
Related¶
- Instantiates: Narrative Transportation Persuasion Design — the card supplies the disclosure and evidence-trace the archetype treats as core, not optional.
- Consumes: case_story_library supplies the source status and permissions the card reports.
- Sibling mechanisms: audience_counterargument_map · transportive_storyboard · character_identification_matrix · case_story_library · counter_narrative_red_team · narrative_ethics_review · post_story_reflection_prompt · story_a_b_interpretation_test · action_link_landing_path
Editorial Notes¶
Form Classification¶
Form family: Interface, Display & Cue
Rationale: Source and Composite Disclosure Card operates as a user-facing prompt, display, template, or perceptual cue that shapes attention and action at the point of use because it labels whether details are real, anonymized, composite, dramatized, speculative, or illustrative.
Independent corroboration: The frozen evidence defines Source and Composite Disclosure Card as 'Labels whether details are real, anonymized, composite, dramatized, speculative, or illustrative', so its operative form is Interface, Display & Cue.
Nearest alternative: Representation, Specification & Plan — Source and Composite Disclosure Card includes features of a static representation, map, specification, schema, or prospective plan that externalizes information, but its defining operation is a user-facing prompt, display, template, or perceptual cue that shapes attention and action at the point of use.
Review outcome: Independent reviewer agreement; medium confidence.
Origin Attribution¶
Primary origin: Communication & Media Studies
Origin pattern: Cross-disciplinary synthesis
Present-day reach: Universal
Rationale: Labeling whether presented material is real, composite, dramatized, or illustrative is audience-facing transparency about representation. FTC disclosure guidance requires material context to be clear, conspicuous, and colocated with the message; law supplies enforceability.
Related originating lineages:
- Art & Aesthetics — art_aesthetics contributes visual art, composition, and design practice to this mechanism's defining operation—Labels whether details are real, anonymized, composite, dramatized, speculative, or illustrative—without displacing the selected primary historical lineage.
- Ethnography & Qualitative Methods — Anonymization and composite cases balance participant protection with evidentiary honesty.
- Law & Governance — Disclosure protects informed interpretation where representation affects rights or reputation.
- Literature & Literary Theory — Genre and paratext signal fictionalization and narrative construction.
- Public Administration & Policy — Public administration, policy implementation, and program oversight supplies a parallel or contributing lineage for the mechanism's defining operation: labels whether details are real, anonymized, composite, dramatized, speculative, or illustrative.
Review resolution: The blind reviewers disagree on primary lineage (communication_media_studies versus law_governance). Authoritative or primary research supports communication_media_studies as the best historical origin: Labeling whether presented material is real, composite, dramatized, or illustrative is audience-facing transparency about representation. FTC disclosure guidance requires material context to be clear, conspicuous, and colocated with the message; law supplies enforceability. The cited Federal Trade Commission, Endorsement Guides: Clear and Conspicuous Disclosure directly supports the mechanism's defining operation. All independently supported contributing domains are retained without an arbitrary cap. origin_mode=cross_disciplinary_synthesis records lineage, while domain_reach=universal records later applicability separately from provenance.
Attribution caveat: The taxonomy has no general professional-ethics domain; law_governance and communication_media_studies carry disclosure practice, while art and literature cover composite representation.
Encyclopedia synthesis: The exact catalogued form synthesizes established practice rather than reproducing a single standard historical label.
Review outcome: Researched adjudication after independent review; high confidence.
Sources consulted:
Notes¶
[n1] Composite character — a figure assembled from several real people's experiences into one narrative persona, a long-standing device in documentary and nonfiction journalism. It is considered legitimate only when disclosed; presenting a composite as a single real individual is treated as a serious breach of the audience's trust, which is exactly the failure the card exists to prevent. ↩