Re-thinking Mediations of Post-truth Politics and Trust

ISBN-13: 9781032484198 / Twarda / 2023 / 272 str.

Opis

This collection reaches beyond fake news and propaganda, beyond misinformation and charismatic liars, to explore the lesser-publicized cultural forms and practices that serve as a cultural infrastructure for post-truth society and politics.

Recenzje

Truth hasn’t disappeared but it has been weaponised to suit the agendas of both reactionary populists and forgetful liberals. This wonderful and accessible book critiques the assumption that we have only recently entered a dystopian world dominated by ‘fake news’ and ‘disinformation’. Instead, its rich variety of essays place history and power at the heart of the meaning of post-truth, positioning it less as a universal variable than a specific marker of political and cultural anxieties about contemporary capitalism. 

Des Freedman, Professor, Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, University of London

In Re-thinking Mediations of Post-truth and Trust, Jayson Harsin has brought together a stunning array of critical contributions to this most urgent of contemporary questions. Collectively, the book's chapters radically eschew those nostalgic lamentations for a mythical time when 'objective facts' always won out over 'fake news'. Instead, the authors provide an astute conjunctural analysis of post-truth, insisting that the intensifying 'crisis' in public trust must be understood in contexts of power and injustice, including racism, ethnonationalism, misogyny, debt, war, and the political economy of media. Covering issues from mirror selfies, deepfakes, the manosphere, rape culture, to the hyper-collusion between media and ethnonationalist governments, this collection argues compellingly that post-truth must be understood first and foremost as an anxious public mood - one which arises from the systemic failings of liberal democracy.

Jilly Boyce Kay, Loughborough University

This volume of work by leading critical thinkers is a vital contribution to the study of culture, politics, and post-truth. The book clarifies that the practices and meanings surrounding post-truth, which tend to be preoccupied with fact-checking and combatting disinformation, should be understood as historically and internationally fluctuating cultural formations. The volume's authors insightfully unpack how situated popular cultural formations directly shape politics. 

Brett Nicholls, University of Otago, New Zealand 

While the layers of the digital and data-driven media society evolutions have become a subject of systemic investigations, a few publications address the cultural flavours in researching, experiencing, and perceiving the value of authentic communications. The collective work edited by Jayson Harsin has a high potential to advance our knowledge and wisdom on the origins and theories of fake news and misinformation alongside the critical cultural infrastructure for post-truth society and politics. The multicultural team of research traditions represented by Western and non-Western scholars successfully contribute to the theory-building and critical reflections on the post-truth case studies.

Michał Głowacki, University of Warsaw, Poland 

Spis treści

1. Introduction: Post-truth as Globalizing Public Mood (Indefinite, Anxious, Dystopic)

2. Media and the Restyling of Politics 20 years on: A Note. (March 2023)

3. The Post-truth of Rape

4. Wikiality within the Manosphere: Namuwiki, Gender Equalism, and Antifeminist Disinformation in the Post-Truth Era

5. Redpilling and the Archaic Roots of Patriarchal Post-truth

6. The Nordic Far Right and the Production of Gut Feelings

7. Fake Mirror Selfies and the Reproduction of Generalized Cultural Distrust

8. Seeing Through the Fog of War: Assessing Epistemic Burden around Cheapfakes and Deepfakes of Geopolitical Crisis

9. The Truth About Influence

10. Post-truth in Turkey:  Political Economy of media and Articulations of Gender, Ethnicity and Nationalism 

11.  Ethno-nationalist drivers of the Indian media truth-telling crisis

12.  Rumoring as Contention in the Chinese Digital Sphere

O autorze

Jayson Harsin is Associate Professor of Media and Politics and Director of the Center for Media, Communication & Global Change, The American University of Paris. He has published widely on the relationship of deception, popular media, and politics, in the context of cultural globalization.