Post-truth politics
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Post-truth politics (also called post-factual politics) is a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored. Post-truth (beyond or superseding the importance of truth; pertaining to an era or situation when truth is no longer significant or relevant; usually in a pejorative sense, uncaring of factual accuracy) differs from traditional contesting and falsifying of truth by rendering it of "secondary" importance. While this has been described as a contemporary problem, there is a possibility that it has long been a part of political life, but was less notable before the advent of the Internet. In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell cast a world in which the state changes historic records daily to fit its propaganda goals of the day.
Political commentators have identified post-truth politics as ascendant in American, Australian, British, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Russian and Turkish politics, as well as in other areas of debate, driven by a combination of the 24-hour news cycle, false balance in news reporting, and the increasing ubiquity of social media. In 2016, "post-truth" was chosen as the Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year, due to its prevalence in the context of that year's Brexit referendum and U.S. presidential election that put Donald Trump in power.
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