Re-thinking Mediations of Post-truth Politics and Trust: Globality, Culture, Affect

This collection explores the lesser-publicized cultural forms and practices that serve as a cultural infrastructure for post-truth society and politics, critically examining post-truth as a dynamic and shifting site of contestation and crisis. It considers changing technologies and practices of cultural production, seismic cultural changes in representations, values, and roles, and questions of authenticity, honesty, and power relations. Post-truth becomes an influentially anxious public mood about the struggles to secure or undermine publicly accepted facts.

Format: Hardback
Length: 242 pages
Publication date: 29 December 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This comprehensive collection delves beyond the realm of fake news, propaganda, misinformation, and charismatic liars to examine the lesser-known cultural forms and practices that serve as a cultural infrastructure for post-truth society and politics. By situating post-truth within specific contexts as a site of contestation or crisis, the book critically explores it as a dynamic and shifting terrain upon which political and cultural practices in various contexts revolve and intersect. Through a wide range of perspectives, the volume considers a multitude of overlapping cultural and political developments across diverse national and transnational contexts. These include the changing technologies and practices of cultural production, which sometimes challenge and at other times reinforce the authority of traditional institutional truth-tellers; seismic cultural shifts in representations, values, and roles regarding gender, sexuality, race, and historical memory, accompanied by corresponding reactionary discourses in the culture wars; questions of authenticity, honesty, and power relations that amalgamate many of the aforementioned shifts within an all-encompassing culture of (self-)promotional, attentional capitalism. These considerations prompt scholars to focus on corresponding shifting cultural dynamics of popular truth-telling and (dis-)trust-making, which shape political culture in a broader global context. In this expanded perspective, post-truth emerges as a profoundly anxious public mood concerning the challenges of securing or undermining publicly accepted facts.

This nuanced and insightful collection holds appeal to scholars and students engaged in the fields of communication studies, media and cultural studies, media ethics, journalism, media literacy, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and politics. It offers valuable insights into the complex interplay between culture, politics, and truth, shedding light on the ways in which post-truth shapes our understanding of the world and influences our societal and political dynamics.

Weight: 630g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032484198