This study explores how digital media plays a role in creating a sense of authenticity in museum exhibitions. Cultural-historical museums deal with artifacts, memories, and events from past eras. It is the curator’s task to create reliable connections to history by organizing resources to present credible narratives and bring the past to life. Digital technologies like virtual reality and immersive projections may offer new rhetorical tools to foster a sense of connection to history. Although earlier research has centered on notions of aura and authenticity (e.g., Benjamin, 2008; Aravantis and Zuanni, 2021; Bolter et al., 2021; Latour and Lowe, 2011), our study contributes to this literature by approaching these ideas through the framework of social semiotics. It does so by examining how authenticity is constructed digitally and rhetorically through the use of semiotic resources like color, contextualization, light, and depth (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2021). These resources act as validity markers, indicating the represented level of authenticity. The study is part of a larger research project on the effects of digitization on exhibitions and visitor engagement, conducted in collaboration with staff from five museums in Sweden. Data includes photographs and video recordings of museum exhibits containing digital applications and transcripts from workshops with museum staff.