DailyPost 307
POST TRUTH / POST TRUTH POLITICS / POST TRUTH AGE
With the onset of the Information Age based on data as the critical driving force in every field, the smokescreen created deliberately by vested interests was bound to disappear. Truth was expected to prevail & life would necessarily be dictated by facts. Today its exactly the opposite. The mixture of politics, media, lobbyists & vested interests of different kinds, have leapfrogged us into a world of post truth.
Oxford Dictionaries word of year 2016, Post Truth’s usage increased by 2000%. It is defined as an adjective, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion & personal belief.” The US presidential elections, 2016, made Post Truth centre stage. Even post election, the US presidency is making the best out of it.
“Post truth politics is a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals of emotion disconnected with details of policy & by assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored.” It is scary situation & is an antithesis to what modern world stands for. Brexit referendum is a prime example of this politics & propaganda. This culture is engulfing the well established facts of the Climate Change debate.
State funded new agencies globally indulge liberally in this act. Social media with its anonymity in a way has added a new dimension. The networks that users create become Echo Chambers, where one political viewpoint / claim dominates & scrutiny of claims doesn’t matter. This is what we call the phenomenon of social media bubble in radicalisation. In our new digital age anybody can post his opinion, its acceptability can transform it, into a fact.
The reality is that in the Echo Chambers everybody’s voice gets legitimised as fact with other users validating one another. What we set out for and in what whirlpool we have landed.
THE POST TRUTH CAN SEND THE WOLRD IN A SPIN.
Sanjay Sahay