Post-truth Research Articles

Lies, Bullshit, or Propaganda?

Abstract The notion of ‘Post-truth Politics’ and of the ‘Post-Factual’ are notoriously blurry. In this article, I distinguish the concepts of lies, bullshit, and propaganda. I argue that the post-factual displays elements of all three concepts, so that it can be either understood to be in continuity with using lies and bullshit as means of political discourse; or to discontinue the basic commitments of democracy by attacking the epistemic foundations. In a second step, I argue that the common orientation towards the ideal of public reason cannot be abandoned at will, so that any Post-truth Politics is bound to fail in the end. I defend a concept of deliberative democracy which has a robust understanding of the rationality of democratic deliberation. At the same time, I argue against the assumption that the solution to ‘post-factualism’ is a return to a fictitious ‘Age of Facts’ since there are not facts without interpretation.

Pengawasan Pemilihan Umum di Era Post-Truth: Problem, Tantangan, dan Strategi

The 2024 election related with a post-truth era. This makes the potential for problems and challenges that must be faced and resolved. This study formulates problems (1) what are problems and challenges of supervising General Election in the post-truth era? and (2) what is the general election monitoring strategy in the post-truth era? The purpose of this research is to find the problems and challenges of general election supervision in the post-truth era; and (2) formulating a strategy for monitoring the General Elections in the post-truth era. The research method used in this study is a qualitative approach and the type of juridical normative research. The results of the study show that there are problems that will or have occurred in the post-truth election, such as (1) low digital literacy; (2) limited human resources related to election supervision in the digital realm; and (3) the lack of regulation on election law enforcement in the post-truth era. Potential challenges exist for example (1) large internet users in Indonesia; (2) the potential for intervention by other countries through digital; and (3) the effect of the division of society as a result of the election. The strategy that must be carried out is by using two approaches, namely prevention and action.

Peran Jurnalisme Media Sosial dalam Mewujudkan Demokrasi Indonesia di Era Post Truth

Social Media is one of the public spaces for discussing and participating in politics to realize democracy. However, social media also has a weakness in disseminating hoaxes, misinformation, and exposing the Post Truth phenomenon that threatens the sustainability of democracy in Indonesia. The Normative Media Theory suggests that a media should (1) guarantee freedom of opinion, (2) convey information and know the truth, (3) be independent and reduce the interests of media owners, (4) have a variety of information available to the public, (5) reach out to the public. broadly various audiences, (6) supports a democratic political system, (7) and respects the privacy and human rights in general. This study investigates the role of KompasTV social media in realizing democracy in the post-truth era as a form of social media journalism. The research method used is descriptive qualitative with data collection in the form of observations and interviews. From the results of the research, it was found that KompasTV social media journalism upholds aspects of the Normative Media Theory perspective by prioritizing news value, verification, and fact-checking to ward off and avoid hoaxes, due to important and interesting things for the community. However, as a media that plays in the realm of social media, KompasTV in the pre-election period used SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Trending Topics, and viral issues in its journalistic production to increase views. Meanwhile, during the election period, KompasTV social media put forward the principle of balance.

Responding to the Challenges of Global Disinformation: The Era of Post-Truth and the Social Sciences

Responding to the Challenges of Global Disinformation: The Era of Post-Truth and the Social Sciences

Motivating and Maintaining Ethics, Equity, Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Expertise in Peer Review

Scientists who engage in science and the scientific endeavor should seek truth with conviction of morals and commitment to ethics. While the number of publications continues to increase, the number of retractions has increased at a faster rate. Journals publish fraudulent research papers despite claims of peer review and adherence to publishing ethics. Nevertheless, appropriate ethical peer review will remain a gatekeeper when selecting research manuscripts in scholarly publishing and approving research applications for grant funding. However, this peer review must become more open, fair, transparent, equitable, and just with new recommendations and guidelines for reproducible and accountable reviews that support and promote fair citation and citational justice. We should engineer this new peer-review process with modern informatics technology and information science to provide and defend better safeguards for truth and integrity, to clarify and maintain the provenance of information and ideas, and to rebuild and restore trust in scholarly research institutions. Indeed, this new approach will be necessary in the current post-truth era to counter the ease and speed with which mis-information, dis-information, anti-information, caco-information, and mal-information spread through the internet, web, news, and social media. The most important question for application of new peer-review methods to these information wars should be ‘Who does what when?’ in support of reproducible and accountable reviews. Who refers to the authors, reviewers, editors, and publishers as participants in the review process. What refers to disclosure of the participants' identities, the material content of author manuscripts and reviewer commentaries, and other communications between authors and reviewers. When refers to tracking the sequential points in time for which disclosure of whose identity, which content, and which communication at which step of the peer-review process for which audience of readers and reviewers. We believe that quality peer review, and peer review of peer review, must be motivated and maintained by elevating their status and prestige to an art and a science. Both peer review itself and peer review analyses of peer reviews should be incentivised by publishing peer reviews as citable references separately from the research report reviewed while crossreferenced and crosslinked to the report reviewed.

The construction of the Chinese image from the perspective of others in the post-truth era——A Frame and Semiotic analysis of BBC’s reports of the Beijing Winter Olympics

News reports are significant for constructing a country’s image in the international community. The frame analysis of Western media coverage of China is quite popular. With the arrival of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which stands as another historical moment in the processing of China’s external image, disputed issues in China have surfaced again in the Western media. In the context of the new media, there still exists a research gap on the new characteristics of Western media when reporting China and the resulting recent changes in China's image. To fill this gap in the literature, based on the semiotic theory and framing theory, this dissertation has selected the 16 reports and their corresponding Twitter comments on the Beijing Winter Olympics which were published by the British news agency BBC in January - February 2022. By utilizing the AntConc to establish corpus and text analysis, it shall investigate from the perspective of others the discourse construction characteristics of Western media and the Chinese image from the three components of communication theme, text content, and audience feedback. The research results have presented that the Western media represented by the BBC cannot eliminate ideological stereotypes in the discourse construction of the "other" (China). The intention of the report is tendentious. Its reporting news frame is based on inherent prejudice and the opinion tendency to incite Public Opinion. Thus, it has resulted in the formation of a Chinese image of “high-pressure coercion” and “ignoring human rights” from the perspective of the other. Therefore, this dissertation adopts China as an example to propose the media cross-cultural international communication strategy of expanding the discourse subject, updating the symbol system and absorbing the folk discourse.

Young children and the need for critical literacy and epistemic cognition skills in the post-truth era

Young children and the need for critical literacy and epistemic cognition skills in the post-truth era

Membaca Gerak Roh di Era Pasca-Kebenaran: Analisis Pneumatologis Video “Propaganda Anti-Islam” Robert Spencer

This paper aims to show the need to deciphere the movement of the Holy Spirit correctly in the post-truth era, where truth is determined by the dominant system, and not the correct system, as Michel Foucault said.<br />Through the views of Christian pneumatology in both Eastern and Western theological traditions, Asian context, media analysis and philosophy, this paper analyzes anti-Islam propaganda videos by Robert Spencer. The Holy<br />Spirit certainly didn’t blow on Spencer’s propaganda, because the Spirit basically unites and not divides (Galatians 5:21-23). In the Pentecost, the Holy Spirit enabled the apostles to be open and accepting differences in language and the aspects contained therein: culture, beliefs, and customs. The pneumatological views of Zizioulas, Jurgen Moltmann, Karl Rahner, Michael Welker, Clark Pinnock, and the Bishops of Asia emphasize that the Holy Spirit who is still moving contains the power that sustains and inspires people towards truth and peace. Hegel’s dialectical philosophy of the Spirit can be a way of thinking for the faithful to critically deciphere the movements of the Spirit through digital literacy. In the digital world, humans as “Hearers of the Word” are “Password Breakers”<br />who are critical in deciphering the movements of the Spirit.<br /><br /><strong>Keywords:</strong> Holy Spirit, Church, dialogue, post-truth, media

The legitimacy of science and the populist backlash: Cross-national and longitudinal trends and determinants of attitudes toward science.

Public attitudes toward science have risen for decades yet dropped in the most recent period coinciding with the emergence of anti-scientific populist discourses around the world. Controlling for a number of attitudinal and demographic factors, this study examines whether populist discourse and vote share as well as regime polity have an impact on the public legitimacy of science in the period 2005-2020. Cross-national findings suggest that populism is a consistent predictor of declining support for science across all models, regardless of the political system. While it might be too early to alert to lasting damage done by populist leaders to the public standing of science, more research is warranted to ascertain the impact of anti-scientific rhetoric in the "post-truth era."

CYBER POSKAMLING SEBAGAI IMPLEMENTASI RESIPROKAL AL-QUR’AN TERHADAP KONTRA CYBER RADICALISM: ANALISIS MAKNA “TA’ĀWUN” Q.S. AL-MAIDAH AYAT 2

Social media is now an inseparable part of human life, along with technological advances, social media has also experienced a very significant development. In addition to producing positive effects with all the facilities offered, the development of social media also produces negative effects that must be watched out for. One of them is the birth of radical content. Departing from this problem, the author conducted this research in the hope of contributing to the prevention of cases of the spread of radical content in cyberspace (cyber radicalism) by taking inspiration from. Q.S. al-Maidah [5]: 2. This paper departs from two big questions, namely: first, how is the interpretation and contextualization of Q.S. al-Maidah [5]: 2 as the basic concept of reciprocal al-Qur'an?, secondly how is the implementation of Q.S. al-Maidah [5]: 2 as inspiration from cyber poskamling?. The method used in this research is the library study method. From the results of this study, the authors conclude that: (1) First, Q.S. Al-Maidah explains the prohibition of repaying evil with the same evil on the basis of revenge, on the contrary the verse commands to help each other in doing good. In the current post truth era, the verse can be understood as a call to humans to work hand in hand to counteract radical content (cyber radicalism) that creates divisions among society; and (2) concrete steps of implementing Q.S. al-Maidah [5]: 2 is by promoting cyber poskamling as one of the efforts to fight the attacks of radical content circulating in cyberspace, in addition to the government and its ministries making policies through presidential regulations and ministerial regulations, as well as law enforcement officers taking preventive actions. By establishing a cyber patrol, the public must also play an active role by establishing a cyber poskamling and reporting to the authorities if they find content or websites that are indicated to contain radical content and then legal action is taken by the competent authorities in accordance with applicable laws.

Alex Janvier’sIron Foot Place: Indigenous Public Art, Survivance, and Settler Reconciliation in Edmonton’s Rogers Place

On 8 September 2016, Tsa Tsa Ke K’e (Iron Foot Place) was officially unveiled in the floor of the new Rogers Place Arena, home to the National Hockey League’s Edmonton Oilers. The circular, 45-foot-diameter tile mosaic is the creation of renowned contemporary artist Alex Janvier (Denesųłiné/Saulteaux), whose remarkable career has involved fighting for artistic sovereignty and resisting settler colonialism. This mural has prompted multiple expressions and practices of Indigenous survivance, performances and gestures of state and corporate reconciliation, and exists at the edge of some of the lived realities of exacerbated biopolitical necropolitics in Edmonton. In this article, we explore the intersections of art and professional men’s hockey as they coexist under ongoing settler colonialism at the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century. In post–Truth and Reconciliation Commission Canada, how do investments in public art in corporate-civic professional sport partnerships further celebrate Indigenous culture and persistent presence? And concomitantly, how do such investments continue to both obscure and intensify the genocidal conditions under which the settler nation of Canada was created, and just as importantly, continues to function?

Politics, rumors and identity: how does a domestic firm challenge an MNE in the non-market environment amidst home–host political hostility?

PurposePrior studies of competitive dynamics in emerging economies restricted their attention to how the multinational enterprise (MNE) initiates actions against the domestic firm in the market environment with no regard for the home-host relations. By contrast, this study aims to investigate how the domestic firm challenges the MNE in the non-market environment when there is home–host political hostility.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a case study of non-market rivalry between an MNE from the Taiwan region and a domestic firm on the Chinese mainland in the period 2004–2008.FindingsRiding the home–host political hostility, the domestic firm mounted political tactics against the MNE on two fronts. It lobbied the government for identity-targeted policy changes, which demanded state-funded clients buy only from domestic suppliers. It also unethically spread identity-targeted political rumors to vilify the MNE in the local society. The MNE defended itself against the unfavorable policy by engaging in identity work of restructuring its distribution channels to conceal its “foreign” (non-domestic) identity. To fight off the rumors, it built a corporate citizen identity by identity work of aligning corporate social responsibility and research and development with local policy priorities.Originality/valueThe authors broaden the concept of competitive aggressiveness to include non-market actions, particularly unethical ones targeting a rival’s identity. The authors contribute to identity work scholarship by pinpointing an unrecognized phenomenon – high-effort identity work, used by the MNE as a defensive response. The emergent findings develop a moral perspective on non-market rivalry.

Tartuffe in the Post-Truth Era

Tartuffe in the Post-Truth Era

Case Study: Postruth Construction During The Covid 19 Pandemic

This study aims to propose post truth as one of the constructions of transhumanism. To make it easy to understand, the research took case studies in cyberspace related to Covid-19 in Indonesia. Fairclough's critical discourse analysis method is used to analyze post truth on Instagram social media. The results show that post truth as a construction of transhumanism has several arrangements. First, there is a post truth agent, namely the implementing party or subject who does post truth, this shows that the existence of digital technology makes humans have an ambivalent identity. Second, momentum, in this case of the covid pandemic and hot issues (disputes between regional leaders as the time for discourse to appear), momentum is the key that post truth can occur. This shows that technology is used to understand how we co-create human experience. Finally, people who concentrate on digital technology and cyberspace currently operate with the logic of surveillance capitalism, meaning that everything is measured by the number of clicks, engagement, and the duration of the audience watching. We believe that these results have the potential to cause bias in the truth of information to the public, so this study suggests that public authorities should take all the necessary measures to enhance the literacy public to mitigating the negative impacts caused due to the post truth.

If You Have a Reliable Source, Say Something: Effects of Correction Comments on COVID-19 Misinformation

In the post-truth era, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, an effective correction on misinformation is necessary to promote personal and public health. To better understand the effect of “correcting” misinformation, therefore, we investigated correction from different users on social media (e.g., individual users, fact-checking websites, and health organizations) and the frequency of correction (e.g., once vs. twice) in three online experiments. In each experiment, we evaluated participants’ perceived accuracy and willingness to share in terms of real and fake news of COVID-19, respectively. Across all experiments, a single correction from the health organizations effectively reduced participants’ perceived accuracy rating on the COVID-19 fake news. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed the effects of a single correction from individual users and fact-checking websites. Moreover, results of post-session questionnaires indicated that participants counted on the reliability of the sources in the correction. We did not obtain the consistent effects of frequent correction but verified the vulnerability of participants with high health anxiety to the COVID-19 fake news across all experiments. Overall, our study highlights the effects of user-initiated correction regardless of whether the user is an individual or an organization, as long as the correction contains a reliable source.

Learners’ Characters in Post Truth Era: A Critical Study of the book of Izhatun Nasyi’in by Syekh Mustafa Al-Ghalayaini

The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) stated that in 2016, 50% of 33 million Indonesian youth have committed acts of violence due to misinformation. This incident occurred as a result of the proliferation of post truth phenomena which are increasingly dangerous. This study aims to describe the character of learners in the post truth era in the perspective of Shaykh Mustafa al-Ghalayaini in his book, Izhatun Nasyi'in. Using library research method, this research explored the concept of learners’ characters that should be possessed in responding to the post truth phenomenon. The results showed that the learning characters offered by Shaykh Musthafa al-Ghalayaini were intensive coaching, mentoring, and giving advice. Then the process of character building was based on the character values needed by students in responding to post truth phenomena such as being patient, not using religion for personal commercial purpose, having hopes and dreams, courage, prioritizing the benefit of the people, renewal, being religious, liking to read ,nationalist, will, simple, and trustworthy. These attitudes are the description of learners’ characters to fight the negative impact of post truth that occurs among teenagers.

A car wash: post-truth politics, Petrobras and ethics of the real

PurposeThe study draws upon three accounts to examine post-truth politics and its link to accounting. In studying Petrobras, a Brazilian petrochemical company embroiled in a corruption scandal, the authors draw upon a politics of falsity to understand how different depictions of similar events can emerge. The authors depict Petrobras' corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures during the period of corruption juxtaposed against the Brazilian Federal Police investigation (the Lava Jato/Car Wash Operation) and Petrobras' response to the allegations of institutional corruption.Design/methodology/approachThe data set consisted of 56 Petrobras reports including Annual Reports, Financial Statements, Sustainability Reports and Form 20-Fs from 2004 to 2017, information disclosed by the Brazilian Federal Police concerning the Lava Jato Operation and media reports concerning Petrobras and the corruption scandal. The paper employs a discourse analysis approach to depict and interpret the accounts.FindingsThrough examining the connection between ontic accounts and ontological presuppositions, the authors illustrate a post-truth logic underpinning accounting, due to the interpretive, contestable and contingent nature of accounting information. Consequently, the authors turn to the “ethics of the real” as a response, as citizen subjects must be cautious in how they approach accounting and CSR disclosures.Originality/valueRather than relying on simplistic true/false dualities, the authors argue that the “ethics of the real” provides a courageous position for citizen subjects to interrogate the organisation by recognising the role of discourse and disclosure expectations on organisations in a post-truth environment. The study also illustrates how competing, contingent accounts of the same timeframe and events can emerge.

Ukraine and the International Criminal Court

Abstract Ukraine exhibits two, seemingly contradictory, attitudes towards the International Criminal Court (ICC). On the one hand, it lodged two ad hoc declarations, accepting the ICC’s jurisdiction over certain alleged crimes occurring on its territory since late 2013; on the other hand, the desirability of ratifying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court remains an open question. This problem is exacerbated by the highly contested information environment, as well as by the widespread misunderstanding of the ICC, its functioning, and its likely impact on events in Ukraine. The present article examines the heated debate between national stakeholders from the vantage point of post-truth politics. It also explains how the government can use the status quo to keep prospective international investigations and prosecutions under control.

The Essay at the Limits: Poetics, Politics and Form

The Essay at the Limits: Poetics, Politics and Form

Poly-truth, or the limits of pluralism: Popular debates on conspiracy theories in a post-truth era.

Conspiracy theories are central to “post-truth” discussions. Official knowledge, backed by science, politics, and media, is distrusted by various people resorting to alternative (conspiratorial) explanations. While elite commentators lament the rise of such “untruths,” we know little of people’s everyday opinions on this topic, despite their societal ramifications. We therefore performed a qualitative content analysis of 522 comments under a Dutch newspaper article on conspiracy theories to study how ordinary people discuss post-truth matters. We found four main points of controversy: “habitus of distrust”; “who to involve in public debates”; “which ways of knowing to allow”; and “what is at stake?” The diverging opinions outline the limits of pluralism in a post-truth era, revealing tensions between technocratic and democratic ideals in society. We show that popular opinions on conspiracy theories embody more complexity and nuance than elite conceptions of post-truth allow for: they lay bare the multiple sociological dimensions of poly-truth.