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Post-truth

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Fake News vs Media Studies

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Abstract

Like fake news; post-truth is a signifier, to which vested interests can be attached. The cynical disengagement of the public from politics, academia and other elite arenas, during austerity, can be harnessed by representatives of those groups to suit their agendas—Trump on climate change, Michael Gove on how we’ve ‘enough of experts’. As discussed in the chapter setting out the contexts for this topic, the notion of post-truth is also utilized to attack the left-wing of critical theory and postmodernism in particular, from which academics encouraged us to view truth-claims as subjective and relative; the argument now being along the lines of ‘careful what you wish for’. This chapter will explore the relationship between post-truth, fake news and Media Studies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Excellence in Media Practice, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK

    Julian McDougall

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  1. Julian McDougall
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Correspondence to Julian McDougall .

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McDougall, J. (2019). Post-truth. In: Fake News vs Media Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27220-3_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27220-3_6

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-27219-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-27220-3

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