Beyond the interface: demarcations and singularities of the digital truthmaker

Abstract

This article examines the function of the digital fact as a truthmaker in evidentiary reasoning. It argues that the digital objects submitted as evidence in judicial proceedings—screenshots, digital photographs, records, logs, or other visualizations—are forms of access to a type of fact whose materiality is distributed, encoded, and relational, and which cannot be adequately known through traditional mechanisms of perception or inspection, as these remain confined to the surface of the phenomenon. On this basis, the article develops the structural singularities of digital facts and shows that they require shifting evidentiary assessment from an epistemology of presence, characteristic of the analog paradigm, toward an epistemology of technical production. Finally, it analyzes the consequences of this shift for the theory of evidence.