5 Tools for a Post-Truth World

Ibersid: revista de sistemas de información y documentación, 2018

The new and disturbing phenomenon of “Post-Truth” is discussed with particular attention given to the power of the ‘big-tech- giants and the role of search engines and social media. The use made of these facilities is reviewed with particular regard to their manipulation and exploitation to spread fake news and disinformation. The fight against post-truth is discussed, led by journalists, academia and, with particular emphasis, by the information professions. The role of government and the big-tech companies is also mentioned. The fight includes raising awareness, promotion of information literacy and fact checking. Web-based fact checking sites and advances in automated fact checking are reviewed.

Azimuth. Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age, 2023

Digital infospace is intertwined with the lives of each of us with no actual discontinuity. Its epistemic dynamics are immediately part of social discourse. This is exactly why the urgency to confront such a problem arises, today, for any epistemology that wants to contribute to a critical engagement with our shared present. A good starting point for this inquiry is the confusion, frequent in social discourse, between epistemic bubbles and echo chambers. An epistemic bubble is a social epistemic structure that excludes other relevant epistemic sources. It can constitute itself by sheer environmental dynamics, resulting from the accidental cumulation of knowledge and its segregation from external interferences. An echo chamber is instead a social epistemic structure that actively excludes and discredits other relevant epistemic sources. It works towards this exclusion and in the interest of the epistemic agents who promote it. Both are prominent architectural features of the digital infospace that seamlessly influence the general space of knowledge. Questions regarding their structural character, their differences, the role they assign to truth and epistemic agents, and what the virtuous epistemic agent could or should do with respect to those issues are the focus of this issue of "Azimuth".

2019

of Communication Sciences, teaching courses in postmodern culture and communication, branding and advertising. Her recent research interests are focusing on identity reshaped in our information society. The last book published, entitled 'Small Treatise on Heterotopy for a Postmodern User' discusses the how representations of the self are reconfigured in our contemporary world. Abstract The article underlines the impact of the digital environment in reconfiguring basic notions as the concept of "truth". A more recent alternative-"post-truth"-is discussed in relation with the dissolution of the binary logic and the rise of a new relativism. The new term is challenging the rational pattern of thinking, based on the law of the excluded middle, that was grounding our traditional way of conceiving the world, opening a realm where information is distorted by 'emotionalism', in order to become viral and to generate 'clickbaits'.

2021

The Digital Activism and Society: Politics, Economy and Culture in Network Communication series focuses on the political use of digital everyday-networked media by corporations, governments, international organizations (Digital Politics), as well as civil society actors, NGOs, activists, social movements and dissidents (Digital Activism) attempting to recruit, organise and fund their operations, through information communication technologies. The series publishes books on theories and empirical case studies of digital politics and activism in the specific context of communication networks. Topics covered by the series include, but are not limited to: • the different theoretical and analytical approaches of political communication in digital networks; • studies of socio-political media movements and activism (and 'hacktivism'); • transformations of older topics such as inequality, gender, class, power, identity and group belonging; • strengths and vulnerabilities of social networks.

Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin, 2020

We often encounter the term "post-truth situation" in quite different contexts. This paper compares existing approaches to the term, reviewing sources of this notion in different domains (scientific, political, economic, academic) and fundametally identifying its conceptual core. The starting point is the analysis of the recent transformation of the relationship between scientific fact and the political sphere and the change of the role of experts in relationship to society. The next section focuses on the role of digital and especially social media in the emergence of the post-truth society and some important phenomena that are constitutive for the post-truth society in the information arena. Subsequently, we identify other sources of post-truth situations in the economic sphere, which is related to globalization, and also in the field of postmodern philosophy.

Post-Truth Imaginations offers the most comprehensive and sophisticated treatment of post-truth phenomena to date. The book adopts the standpoint of Science and Technology Studies, the field that has been at the heart of the matter from day one. The editors are to be congratulated for the range of voices heard in these pages and the subtlety of the considerationsconceptual, empirical and practical-that they bring in coming to terms with our 'post-truth condition'. The diagnoses and strategies proposed here are diverse, but there should be something here for anyone who has thought hard about post-truth, whether it be in the spirit of warm embrace or fear and loathing." Steve Fuller, author of Post-Truth: Knowledge as a Power Game and A Player's Guide to the Post-Truth Condition, UK "This book offers a comprehensive overview of the various aspects of posttruth and a deep and novel understanding of its epistemology and politics. It is wide-ranging and deeply insightful, empirically rich and theoretically innovating. Post-Truth Imaginations moves beyond the immediate concerns of fake news, false evidence and failing science communication as it centres on one of the biggest questions of our times. What are the roles of science in society, the politics of technoscience and the public imaginations of democratically governed, science-permeated societies? These are crucial questions if we want to address the global challenges of climate change, pandemics and international justice."

The history and theory of post-truth communication, 2020

In this chapter, we present a few definitions of post-truth and explain why the human capacity for lying and influencing others with false information, which is not new in human history, has given birth to alarming new dangers in recent years. We also set forth our path for describing the history and theoretical claims underlying the phenomenon of posttruth, accounting briefly for the social, political, and economic changes posed by individualization, bureaucratization, and globalization issues that will not be addressed in the remainder of the book.

2018

Italian Sociological Review, 2016

Truth is a complex concept that was able to fascinate the individuals since the dawn of time. The relevance of the truth is confirmed by the centrality that the concept has had in the philosophical debate. The philosophers, from the Presocratics onwards, have questioned the concept of truth providing different interpretations. The global, cosmopolitan and liquid society in which we live can be represented as a labyrinth where it is difficult to navigate as the great narratives are entered into a crisis. The crisis of values and the consequent social anomie, on one hand, and the collective effervescence and democratizing power of the network, on the other hand, open the space to an interpretative antonymic perspective. So the truth can be perceived as an artifact produced by the culture industry in order to become an instrument of political propaganda and social indoctrination in a digital risk society. But, at the same time, the shared horizon of participation, produced by the adve...