Post-truth Research Articles

Digital Pseudo-Identification in the Post-Truth Era: Exploring Logical Fallacies in the Mainstream Media Coverage of the COVID-19 Vaccines

Because of China’s new wave of COVID-19 in May 2023, the issue of tackling COVID-19 misinformation remains relevant. Based on Lippmann’s theory of public opinion and agenda setting theory, this article aims to examine the concept of digital pseudo-identification as a type of logical fallacy that refers to supporting journalists’ opinions with ‘false’ arguments that lack factual evidence. To do so, the study applied computer-aided content analysis, as well as rhetorical and critical discourse analyses, to examine 400 articles related to four COVID-19 vaccines (‘Oxford-AstraZeneca’, ‘Pfizer-BioNTech’, ‘Sputnik V’ and ‘Sinovac’) published on the online versions of two major British and American mainstream media sources between August 2020 and December 2021. The results of the study show that journalists of the ‘The New York Times’ and ‘The Guardian’ used similar logical fallacies, including the opinions of pseudo-authorities and references to pseudo-statistics and stereotypes, which contributed to creating distorted representations of the COVID-19 vaccines and propagating online misinformation. The study also reveals political bias in both of the mainstream media sources, with relatively more positive coverage of the European vaccines than non-European vaccines. The findings have important implications for journalism and open up perspectives for further research on the concept of digital pseudo-identification in the humanities and social sciences.

Review, Democracy and Fake News: Information Manipulation and Post-Truth Politics

Review, Democracy and Fake News: Information Manipulation and Post-Truth Politics

Fragmented Discourses: The Indian Digital Public Sphere in a Post-truth Era

Fragmented Discourses: The Indian Digital Public Sphere in a Post-truth Era

TAFSIR AL-QUR'AN DI ERA POST-TRUTH: ANALISIS WACANA TAFSIR LISAN ACH DHOFIR ZUHRY

This study aims to explain Ach Dhofir Zuhry's oral interpretation of the Qur'an that discusses post-truth discourse. The emergence of post-truth in recent years seems to have eliminated the dividing line between truth and falsehood. Consequently, digitalization presents significant negative impacts in the social, economic, political, and, of course, religious dimensions. In addition, post-truth also opens opportunities for religious people to improve their religious understanding, but on the other hand, the digital world contributes to the increasing issue of religious intolerance and exclusivism. Along with this phenomenon, Ach Dhofir Zuhri came up with an interpretation of the Qur'an through oral speech delivered through social media platforms. Based on qualitative data, this study analyzes literature and digital data, as well as interviews with Dhofir Zuhry. By elaborating on the idea of oral interpretation and modern interpretive discourse, this study shows that Zuhry's oral interpretation in the digital world offers a new perspective on the discussion of Islam and post-truth. In this case, the concept of tabayyun becomes an ethical-contextual solution to face the post-truth era by encouraging the maximum utilization of human reason in social media.

Do emotions conquer facts? A CCME model for the impact of emotional information on implicit attitudes in the post-truth era

This study aimed to examine the influence of emotional media information on information-processing mechanisms in the current post-truth era. A cognitive conflict monitoring and evaluation (CCME) model was proposed to explore news audiences’ attention and implicit attitudes. The study had a 2 (information type, emotional vs. neutral) × 2 (condition, compatible vs. incompatible) × 3 (electrode position: Fz vs. Cz vs. Pz) design, and an implicit association test (IAT) was administered, with event-related potential (ERP) data collected. The results revealed that emotional information evoked different information-processing mechanisms than neutral information. First, in the early conflict-monitoring stage, emotional information altered arousal, and more attentional resources were allocated to semantic processing. Second, in the late evaluation stage, the lack of attentional resources (due to prior allocation) reduced the late-stage evaluation of the target stimuli by participants. Thus, in this post-truth era, attentional resources may be exhausted by processing emotional information in unnecessary media cues irrelevant to facts, inducing early cognitive conflict and prolonged late-stage evaluation of news articles.

Constructing a Vishwaguru (world teacher): Hindu nationalism, populism and the domestic consumption of Narendra Modi’s global image

Narendra Modi is a prime example of a right-wing nationalist populist, in his case, trying to create a new India that rejects India’s traditional secular liberalism in favour of a Hindu state. Modi has gained a reputation amongst his supporters as a visionary who is improving India’s standing on the world stage as a great power and making a revolutionary change in India. But Modi has come under increasing international concern and condemnation for his majoritarian nationalist authoritarianism, which has seen India slide on many democracy indicators, a reality which his supporters reject. We argue, thus, that there is a fundamental discrepancy between the image of the Modi regime abroad and at home, that has gone unexplored in scholarship. We also contend that this discrepancy is implicated in post-truth politics. Modi’s populist project is one of asserting a true Hindu Indian identity, the global criticisms of which, under conditions of post-truth, are either irrelevant or, ironically, contribute to its strength.

A co-creational perspective on consumer-organisation relationships (COR) on digital platforms in a post-truth era

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to build forth on the e-CRM and SCRM processes of customer relationship management and to propose a consumer-organisation relationships (COR) process, which is indicative of the centrality of consumer co-creation and a post-truth view. A co-creational perspective is developed and centralised in the conceptual theoretical framework for consumer-organisation relationships on digital platforms in a post-truth era.Method: The conceptual theoretical research was conducted through a combination of systematic and integrative literature review research designs for the purposes of describing and extending existing literature.Findings: COR confirms the role of consumer co-creation and underlines disinformation as a result of the post-truth era. The proposed co-creational perspective demonstrates prominent considerations of consumer engagement and consumer centralism. Co-creation is indicative of the complexity of managing relationships on digital platforms, due to the centrality of consumer co-creation and a post-truth view. Originality: The article advances knowledge on consumer co-creation in a consumer-organisation relationships process. It further offers new perspectives to customer relationship management in its advancement from e-CRM and SCRM to COR, as viewed from consumer and co-creational perspectives. It is contextualised in a post-truth era with consideration of the role of disinformation in consumer-organisation relationships.

Fake news as a distortion of media reality: tell-truth strategy in the post-truth era

The article deals with fake news which has been considered one of the greatest threats to information security. The expansion of digital technologies and the development of communication networks have contributed to the spreading of misinformation. In particular, the emergence of different sources of information on the Internet, the growing polarization of opinions in the political and socio-economic dimensions, the devaluation of the fact, and the widespread fake news on the Internet (e.g., social media) form the question of revision of the process of collecting, verifying presenting information, methods, and technologies for verifying facts, including methods for countering fake news. Although this issue has been widely investigated in academic discourse, there are still controversial arguments regarding which elements should form a tell-truth strategy. This paper focuses on recent research that reflects trends and patterns in this field and on the author’s empirical survey - interviews with university professors and media experts (N=6), journalists (N=6), and students (N=14) in Russia. In this study, the author describes the key characteristics of fake news and the elements of this tell-truth strategy. It is intended that this paper focuses on both professional journalists and professors who may use the results of this investigation in such courses as political science, sociology, philosophy, and journalism.

"Hunting Africa": how international trophy hunting may constitute neocolonial green extractivism

In the post-Cold War neoliberal moment of the mid-1990s, Safari Club International's (SCI) nascent but now defunct 'African Chapter' published a Strategic Plan for Africa. Its aim was to secure the "greatest hunting grounds in the world" for access by SCI's hunting membership, the core of which is based in the United States. In advocating private sector-led trophy hunting under the umbrella of the SCI "market place", the plan supported an archetypal mode of 'green extractivism': killing indigenous African mammals and exporting body parts as hunting trophies was justified as 'green' by claiming this elite and arguably 'neocolonial' extraction of animals is essential for wildlife conservation. Already in 1996 SCI deflected scrutiny of this form of 'green extractivism' through promoting a view that any critique of this putative 'green hunting' should itself be dismissed as 'neocolonial.' This discursive twist remains evident in a moment in which trophy hunting is receiving renewed attention as countries such as the UK attempt to write trophy import bans into legislation. I engage with these politicized claims and counter-claims to foreground the lack of neutrality permeating trophy hunting discourse. I work with recent political ecology engagements with 'post-truth politics' to unpack SCI-supported advocacy for using accusations of 'neocolonialism' to counter critique of the neocolonial dimensions of trophy-hunting; showing how elite and greened extractivism through recreational access to land and African fauna is thereby consolidated. I draw on case material from Namibia – a country exhibiting stark inequalities of land and income distribution alongside a thriving trophy hunting industry – to explore how extracted 'green value' from 'conservation hunting' may shore up, rather than refract, neocolonial inequalities.

Post-truth, conspiracy, and fake news in the uncertain times of the COVID-19 pandemic in Morocco

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the truth about the virus and its implications were at issue and were the object of a heated debate, nationally and globally. Because of the novelty of that experience, convergent truths emerged in Morocco, exacerbating the uncertainty that was already prevailing. This article examines these convergent truths, their epistemological bases, claims, and resources. This analysis shows the existence of different powers and strategies to which different truths are linked. The creative truth upheld by the existing dominant power, drawing, for legitimacy, on empirical scientific knowledge and claiming control over the situation. The esoteric truth based on conspiracy theories, political conflict, or the religious doctrine of fatalism and popular culture was supported and diffused through social media and gained traction among the public, already distrustful of the dominant narrative and of the scientific expertise. While other forms of truths existed in this post-truth era, this article focuses on these two kinds of truth, and examines how both were constitutive of two antagonistic discourses that used different kinds of propaganda including even fake news or alternative facts to provide (false or emotional) grounds for their claims. The scrutiny of the interactions between these discourses through media texts showed that while the government used propagandistic (pseudo)scientific messages to control the population and reinforce its authority, with little regard for people’s doubts, worries, and fears, the social media users formed different clusters of like-minded people and resisted the dominant narrative taking advantage of the growing distrust of the government among the population and the communication blunders of some public policy officials.

From Conspiracy Orientation to Conspiracy Attribution: The Effects of Institutional Trust and Demographic Differences

The current post-truth era is characterized by the rapid spread of conspiracy theories which has been exacerbated by public’s lack of agreement on objective facts and presentation of unverified information without supportive evidence. Existing research has examined a myriad of factors which explain the causes of conspiratorial thinking. To extend current research, this study examines the effects of institutional trust and demographic factors (i.e., age, gender, political ideology, household income and education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics [STEM]) in explaining conspiracy orientation (i.e., the dispositional tendency to subscribe to different conspiracy theories) and conspiracy attribution (i.e., the situational tendency to subscribe to conspiracy theories about specific problematic situations). A survey dataset ( N = 720) was collected in South Korea. The findings showed that institutional trust had greater effects than STEM education in explaining conspiracy orientation and attribution. On the other hand, different demographic factors had different effects on conspiracy orientation and attribution.

Post-Truth Era: Gender-Related Reversal Events Taking the Case of Ying Liang and Guanjun Luo as an Example

Given the high transmission efficiency and the vast loads of users on social media platforms, Weibo in China is used by victims to reveal immoral or illegal behaviors to the public. In the post-truth era, an individual's subjectivity on the Internet outweighs objective truths in exerting significant impact. Taking the event of 'Ying Liang and Guanjun Luo' as an example, this study analyzes how digital culture constructed and reinforced public opinion direction by citing statistics on https://ef.zhiweidata.com and several representative comments on Weibo. It can be concluded that the priming effect influences how people evaluate this case and the development of public opinions. Furthermore, this reversal event eventually caused a decline in public trust among netizens, created more obstacles for other female victims who genuinely needed help, and induced a discredit towards feminists radically participating in supporting the female victim.

Gen Zers Confrontation with the Post-Truth Era: A Birds Arent Real Perspective

In October of 2021, a group of young people in San Francisco held up placards in their hands, delivering a truth that seems to be a complete delusion. This article, through the search and review of related literature and based on the potential insights that the "Birds Arent Real" movement provided, will examine how the people of Gen Z are using their dynamic interactivity with new media to resist the centralization of media discourse and the post-truth phenomenon. The thesis concludes that, the Generation Z group has accelerated the decentralization of media discourse, sparking a ferment of anti-surveillance activism and offering potential directions for the future of digital media diversity and equality.

Protected Truths: Neoextractivism, Conservation, and the Rise of Posttruth Politics in Brazil

Recent scholarship links authoritarian populism to environmental governance and changing forms of neoliberalism, yet the central role of the contradiction between territory demarcated for (neo)extractivism and territory demarcated for conservation and protection is heavily understated. This article analyzes the rise of posttruth politics in Brazil as an effort to legitimate unmitigated extractive capitalist growth through a renewed obfuscation of this inherent ecological contradiction. We first demonstrate the concealment of the contradiction through Latin America’s “post-neoliberal” period, based in a neoextractivist economic model. Following, we argue that posttruth politics represents a specific attempt to supersede the previous neoliberal consensus in the face of shrinking commodity returns. Designed to downplay, deny, and remove existing public environmental concerns, we view the posttruth of authoritarian populism as a necessarily spatial project, beyond accounts of cultural or institutional politics alone. The article thus furthers understandings of posttruth by centralizing its role in obscuring the extractivism–conservation contradiction in Brazil and beyond, and as such aligns with a critical effort to mobilize alternatives to the untenable reprimarization of Latin American societies.

The intentions of information sources can affect what information people think qualifies as true

The concept of truth is at the core of science, journalism, law, and many other pillars of modern society. Yet, given the imprecision of natural language, deciding what information should count as true is no easy task, even with access to the ground truth. How do people decide whether a given claim of fact qualifies as true or false? Across two studies (N = 1181; 16,248 observations), participants saw claims of fact alongside the ground truth about those claims. Participants classified each claim as true or false. Although participants knew precisely how accurate the claims were, participants classified claims as false more often when they judged the information source to be intending to deceive (versus inform) their audience, and classified claims as true more often when they judged the information source to be intending to provide an approximate (versus precise) account. These results suggest that, even if people have access to the same set of facts, they might disagree about the truth of claims if they attribute discrepant intentions to information sources. Such findings may shed light on the robust and persistent disagreements over claims of fact that have arisen in the “post-truth era”.

Trust Through Relationships in Journalism

ABSTRACT Digital communication technologies have upended the business models and work practices of professional journalists. Moreover, these technologies have altered the relationship between journalists and the public, resulting in blurred boundaries between the two and more avenues for interactions and relationship-building. In this theoretical paper, we argue that scholarship on the sociology of news has to be broadened to include the concept of relational work, which aims to create relational trust between journalists and their audiences. Specifically, we argue that previous sociological and professional conceptualizations of trust in journalism rest on normative values such as accurate, objective and reliable reporting, presuppose cognitive evaluations of journalistic content and minimize the role of journalist-audience interactions. These conceptualizations frequently neglect emotional and social factors alongside the power structures of news production that impact relationships between journalists and their audience and consequently the evaluation of news. We posit that the relational trust that can arise from these relationships may be critical in the overall development of trust in the journalistic institution, particularly in the current post-truth era of heightened political polarization.

Disruptive docs: teaching hybrid documentary filmmaking in Australia

ABSTRACT As a documentary educator and practitioner in Australia, ‘truth’ is an area of concern for both my students and I in undertaking the risky capturing and the representation of the lives of others. Documentaries are deceptively difficult to make, especially for the novice, and most especially when considering hybrid non-fiction genre forms. The questions my students pose often centre on how much can they blend reality in the ‘post truth’ moment, and what are the practical and ethical challenges of doing so? This paper urges teachers and makers alike to refer to established documentarians who investigate at truthful depictions that often transcend the didactic recitation of facts. Citing the examples of Conjuring the Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (directed by Martin Scorsese, 2019) and The Rehearsal (created by and starring Nathan Fielder, 2022), I present a pragmatic discussion as to how disruptive non-fiction form a pure triadic relationship between participants, audiences, and filmmakers, which necessarily involves the overlap of ethics and creativity. I refer to a recent student hybrid documentary film Bustard Head (directed by Lucy Lakshman, 2021) as an example outcome of this pedagogically oriented approach.

The new normal: governance, disruption and the post-truth era

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the new normal within a continuum of three types of disruption, each of varying duration. References to the new normal draw attention to the periodic and rising importance of different levels, types, and consequences of game-changing disruption for those in governance roles. Design/methodology/approach In this conceptual research, given the discussion of a return to normalcy near the expected end of the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors organize the literature on disruption in governance into a disruption continuum – emergency, crisis and super crisis – to demonstrate the differences in each type of disruption to establish a distinct view of the new normal. Findings Within the three types of disruption, the first two suit the rational authority model in which disruption is turned over to those in governance roles. However, the rational authority model comes under attack in the super crisis and is increasingly associated with the post-truth era. Social implications In Type 3 disruptions or super crises, the failure of those in control to set the parameters of the new normal raises concerns that the center no longer holds, and as a result, the assumption of an attentive public splinter into multiple contending publics, each with its version of data, facts and images. Originality/value The new normal is typically treated after the result of a black swan or rare and surprising long-lived disruption. In this work, the formulation of the recurrence, ubiquity and controversy engendered by super crises suggests that it is one of the features attenuating and giving rise to fractious incivility in the post-truth era.

Program development for leaders in the post-truth era: Arts-based creative leadership communication program

Developments in media and communication technologies welcomed a new era, defined as post-truth, implying a general distancing from truth, where fake or speculative messages can be instantly shared by a vast audience. In this era, we need leaders with strong emotional and social skills to create a positive and ethical impact in society. In this study, due to the requirements of the Post-Truth Era which necessitates a new approach to leadership development, an arts-based learning intervention entitled Arts-Based Creative Leadership Communication Program is designed for leaders with three main objectives to increase, firstly, their creative communication skills; secondly, healing effect of arts for their resilience; and, thirdly, their social sensitivity through arts. After the design and implementation of this program, its targeted effects on the participants were analyzed. Results indicated that all of the expected outcomes were achieved successfully. The highest development was seen in the healing effect, while change in social sensitivity appeared as the lowest. Emotional skills as non-verbal communication element was developed more than social skills. Meanwhile, the emergence of the pandemic with its digital transformation process increased the effects of the program. To sum up, the program was found successful for the leaders in the Post-Truth Era.

Post-truth politics and neoliberal competition: the social sources of dogmatic cynicism

AbstractFrom Trump's America to Putin's Russia, from climate change denial to corona denial, so-called post-truth politics are experiencing a global rise. How can we understand and explain this phenomenon? In the attempt to answer this question, this article advances two core claims. First, it suggests that post-truth politics is (despite its name) marked not only by the denial of claims to objective truth, but also by the naturalization of one specific truth claim: namely, the cynical belief that self-interests are behind all public discourse. Second, it locates the social sources of this dogmatic cynicism in the global expansion of neoliberal competition.