9
DISPUTES OVER OR AGAINST
REALITY?
Fine-graining the textures of post-truth politics
Susana Salgado
What if. . . ?
Imagine a (not-so-far) dystopian world where relativism was so prevalent that any consen-
sus about facts and policy, and thus accountability, was virtually impossible. Now, add to that
unlimited means and freedom of expression. Everyone could say absolutely anything without
any filter or barrier. One of the consequences of the impossibility of distinguishing between
reliable and fake information could be rampant levels of disconnection and apathy, which would
certainly compromise a functional democracy. By the same token, debates would not make any
sense as everyone would primarily follow their own beliefs rather than negotiating the expres-
sion of thoughts to a common ground of understanding problems and facts. Such a scenario
would result, in practice, in the impossibility of democracy, due to absolute freedom of expres-
sion and lack of shared norms and a common ground of reality to stand on. The organisation
of these societies would be based on a system that discouraged the idea of control and would
thus be closer to an actual anarchy where no one would ever trust anyone who had any kind of
expertise, particularly if it would mean contradicting previous beliefs. The absence of a value
assigned to authoritative sources of information or to other symbolic control rules would ulti-
mately translate into a state of institutionalised disorder, which would render virtually impos-
sible any shared ground of perception, experience, or understanding.
The description of this imaginary situation also exposes one of the many paradoxes of
democracy: are we all really equal? Here, that is to ask if uninformed and misinformed opinions
should count the same as the ones from (more) informed citizens. If so, who gets to decide
what is good or bad information and who is informed or misinformed in a world with outright
relativism? And, more importantly, would such selection even be democratic? These considera-
tions relate closely with what is known as the “elitist view of democracy” (e.g. Schubert, Dye
and Zeigler 2015), which upholds fundamental differences between the common citizen and
the elites in terms of capacity to rule and, at an elemental level, even to understand the demo-
cratic political processes. This could then lead to situations in which voters would prefer those
political leaders who presented themselves as part of the people and displayed anti-system views
of politics: in sum, those with a stated disparagement of traditional structures.
All this underlines the fact that, without mechanisms to ensure common basic references
for the significance of and procedures for gathering and reporting information that relies on
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Susana Salgado
fact-based, accurate reports rather than on fabricated and deceptive accounts of reality, the
practice of democracy would become unsustainable. What would follow in that extreme situ-
ation is left to an exercise of our greater or lesser imagination, but the current state of affairs
already provides some clues. An intensification of the present-day pervasiveness of social media
platforms as information tools and of the rising levels of relativism in post-modern societies,
both in terms of prevalence and toleration, could actually lead to the dystopian reality just
described. It is not for nothing that the term post-truth has been put forward to describe the
current era.
Post-truth: what it is (and what it entails)
Post-truth era (e.g. Keyes 2004; Levitin 2017; McIntyre 2018; Farkas and Schou 2020) is one of
a number of expressions that have been used to characterise the current state of affairs; examples
of other relevant terms include ‘post-truth order’ (Harsin 2015), ‘the misinformation age’ (e.g.
O’Connor and Weatherall 2019), ‘post-factual democracies’ (e.g. Hendricks and Vestergaard
2019), ‘ersatz reality’ (Pomerantsev 2019), and ‘infocalypse’ (Schick 2020), among other close
variations. The underlying meaning is very similar as these terms all draw attention to the idea
that we live in a time in which facts seem to matter less than opinions and in which traditional
authoritative sources seem to have lost most of their importance in the face of the democratisa-
tion of access to online publication tools, such as social media. The Oxford Dictionary’s word
of the year in 2016 was post-truth, and for Dictionary.com, the word of the year in 2018 was
misinformation. The first term highlights that objective facts have become less influential in shap-
ing public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief while the second term refers to
the increasing prevalence of false information that is spread, regardless of whether there is intent
to mislead. Public discourse is influenced by a plethora of information (including biased, fake,
offensive, etc.) that, despite of the different status and credibility of sources, is usually treated as
equivalent in online environments. Moreover, how content spreads has gone through drastic
transformations with the rise of social media. It spreads faster than ever.
Attempts to distort the truth and facts are by no means a new phenomenon in history,
including in the history of democracy, but coupled with rising relativism and technological
development, they have become more sophisticated and harder to detect and are being under-
taken by an unprecedented number of actors. The credibility of facts has been increasingly
under pressure due not just to the pervasive relativism of our post-modern times but also to
media environments that are increasingly being defined by the logics of social media and algo-
rithms that give users more of their preferences, prioritise shocking and polarising content, and
function as content accelerators. Conditions such as these propitiate and magnify the dissemina-
tion of propaganda, fake news, and disinformation in general. Additionally, technologies used to
distort reality (e.g. deepfakes) are evolving at a fast pace and substantially faster than the capacity
to understand and control their effects on politics and society.
Even though intents to deceive in politics are not especially new and have been around ever
since there have been attempts to persuade others, the technological setup favours new actors
to take advantage of these conditions. And the impact on democracy of such a combination
of elements has already proved to be particularly unsettling. A non-exhaustive list of examples
that have already occurred include unauthorised access to users’ private information to develop
targeted misinformation campaigns or meddle in elections, computational propaganda, and fake
political activism. Some of these campaigns aim at influencing and polarising opinions; a com-
mon strategy is to change the environment in which those opinions are formed, and decisions
are made: hence, the relevance of the wide spread of misinformation.
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Disputes over or against reality?
What ‘post-truth era’ and other analogous terms thus describe is a time when (more than
ever before) we are regularly exposed to all sorts of sensationalised, misleading, and false con-
tent, such as fake news, conspiracy theories, bogus claims, rumours, computational propaganda,
disinformation campaigns assisted by trolls, targeted misinformation campaigns, fake political
activism, synthetic media, et cetera. This kind of information environment downgrades the
value of the truth and erodes authenticity and the integrity of reliable content and sources.
There are disputes over the validity of almost everything (including proven scientific facts and
the actual occurrence of events in history). But more than that, there is a constant battle to
define reality that is often supported in this type of content.
The blurring of facts and fiction caused by the manipulation of discourses, images, and
sounds is now carried out not only by humans directly but also through efficient artificial intelli-
gence devices. Already materialised examples include fictitious videos with statements by politi-
cal leaders that never happened or with details about an event that never took place (to influence
domestic or foreign policy or to discredit an opponent, for example). AI-powered bots can now
also compete with humans to influence agendas and decisions. These new, increasingly sophis-
ticated technological tools have already proved their efficacy in creating climates of opinion,
manipulating perceptions, stretching the boundaries of online behaviours and discourses, and
falsifying reality. Just the knowledge that this type of technology exists and can be used is already
enough to cast doubt on everything, including on what is real. In itself this also contributes to
eroding the integrity of facts and, hence, the truth.
The traditional sources of information also have had their authority further undermined in
this media environment. In fact, although it is not the only cause of deepening distrust, it has
lowered considerably trust in what used to once be respected sources of factual information
(e.g. Kavanagh and Rich 2018; Marietta and Barker 2019). Authoritative sources (in all areas of
knowledge and expertise) have an important role as benchmarks for what is reality, for the iden-
tification of problems and solutions for those problems. Journalists, elected politicians, scientists,
and other experts, for example, have taken this role in democracy and have framed issues and
guided democratic debates. However, media and audience developments, in particular those
related to social media platforms’ use for access to information, allow for calling everything into
question by circulating large amounts of conflicting information.
On social media, the views and news postings of family, friends, and even acquaintances now
have more potential to be influential than the statements of journalists or pundits (Bode and
Vraga 2018). By prioritising individual opinions and content posted by the users’ friends and
family over professional news outlets (with the justification that this is what people really want
to see), some social media platforms have, in fact, contributed directly to this state of things.
With such logic, principles, and procedures, they are reiterating distrust of authoritative, infor-
mational sources and thus also indirectly undermining the journalism industry’s business model.
Journalism has had historically an important role in the construction of the common ground for
public debate. However, this role is influenced by commercial goals, as well as by media effects,
such as agenda-setting, priming, and framing, all of which have often led to questioning the
true mission and value of journalists. Uscinski (2014) posits that news has become a commod-
ity bought and sold on the market; journalists report certain issues over others in response to
ratings, polls, and audience demographics and not necessarily because audiences need to know
them or need to be informed about them to ensure democratic values.
Mainstream news media outlets have also been accused of being too close to power and
too remote from the citizens’ concerns (for example, the well-known attacks on journalism by
populists, among others) (e.g. Bennett and Pfetsch 2018), which has caused some to predict the
revival of local news sources (e.g. Fowler-Watt and Jukes 2019; Sullivan 2020) as a response to
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this lack of proximity to citizens and as an effort to suppress fake news. Despite the social media
logic and the fact that some politicians have exploited distrust of the media to actively under-
mine the role of journalism in democracy, it cannot be ignored that a commonly agreed set of
facts (reported by independent journalism) was and continues to be the foundation of a func-
tioning, healthy democracy. As Pickard (2019) explains, without a viable, strong news media
system, democracy is reduced to an unattainable ideal. Additionally, downgrading authoritative
informational sources paves the way for the spread of uninformed accounts and all kinds of
misinformation (e.g. Bennett and Livingstone 2018).
In this type of environment, misleading narratives frequently become the basis for debate
and political opinion formation. Moreover, and according to Edelman (2001), public discourses
of democracy tend to be populistic, as typical problem definitions and solutions do not usually
encourage popular understanding or involvement in politics. The deepening distrust of all kind
of authorities relates closely to populism. Much has already been written about populism in
recent years, and the purpose here is not to revisit this prolific literature; however, it makes sense
to briefly ascertain how populism interacts with misinformation and post-truth environments.
In a book of essays about ‘backward phenomena’, Umberto Eco (2014) identifies cases of
revolutionary and reactionary populism but sees an extraordinary resemblance between the two
types: populism ‘is a method that plays on the visceral attraction of what are believed to be the
most deeply entrenched opinions or prejudices of the masses’ (2014, 146). Such interpretation
of populism opens the way to the acknowledgement of its varied (sometimes even contradic-
tory) current forms and its fluid connection with ideology, but obliquely, it also underlines the
appeal to emotions, such as the resurgence of old polemics that had been resolved long ago (e.g.
the anti-Darwinian stance or the anti-vaxxer movement) and the open expression of attitudes
that fall outside political correctness norms (e.g. racist, xenophobic, and misogynous attitudes).
But most importantly, this links to the aforementioned decreasing trust in authorities, coupled
with a mindset that encourages convincing others by any means, even if that entails bending the
facts to extract a predetermined meaning.
This is close to what Frankfurt (2005) defines as ‘bullshit’, which in itself is slightly differ-
ent from lying, according to him. ‘Bullshitters’ do not care about what is true and false in their
assertions. They use ideas to suit their purposes. They seek to convey a certain image, and this
goal justifies distorting reality and not being concerned about whether anything at all is true.
While here any claims about truth and falsehood are completely irrelevant, the liar, by lying, at
least acknowledges the existence of the truth. Green (2019) explored the connections between
populism and the rhetoric of bullshit and identified different performative values in the use of
this type of rhetoric in populism. The exclusivity of the populists’ claim to popular representa-
tion means that they overlook evidence and thus tend to bullshit whenever confronted with
what is contradictory. Hendricks and Vestergaard (2019) clarify how isolated facts and news may
be cherry-picked to support a populist argument and that if facts run counter the core narra-
tive, they are left out or reasoned away as not valid (e.g. statistics are rejected whenever they
contradict claims or agendas), and conspiracy theories are presented to explain that the facts are
being manipulated.
Populism and conspiracy theories do seem to resonate well with each other. Haranovitch
(2011) shows how a conspiracy theory is often populist: namely, when it suggests that actions
were undertaken by an elite against the people. Actually, most conspiracy theories tend to fit
populist narratives very well because they accuse elites and posit Manichean views in which
political competitors are considered enemies of the people (Uscinski 2020). The ideas that
political elites ignore the interests of the people in favour of their own and that the establish-
ment is corrupt and inefficient are commonplaces in populism and in conspiracy theories. New
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Disputes over or against reality?
forms of conspiracism even avoid the burden of explanation and simply impose their own reality
through repetition (Muirhead and Rosenblum 2019). Both the conspiracy and populist rhetoric
appeal to a similar logic: the manipulation of misconceptions. And the fact that populist political
leaders circumvent all kinds of mediation and prefer to communicate directly with the people
means that their views can spread without any type of verification of the narratives put forward
and then shared. Political motivations are thus accelerating the post-truth era. In fact, populism
blends well with most of the noted ‘communication disorders’.
Why this state of things?
Even though political motivations have been at the core of the erosion of truth in our societies,
the post-truth era is not simply a by-product of populism (Salgado 2018). It is impossible to
attribute these developments to one single reason. Instead, a number of factors have contrib-
uted to the decline of the importance of the truth and to an increased emphasis on duelling fact
perceptions driven by emotions and misinformation. Lewandowsky, Ecker, and Cook (2017)
see the post-truth era as a result of societal mega-trends, such as a decline in social capital, grow-
ing economic inequality, increased polarisation, declining trust in science, and an increasingly
fractionated media landscape.
This is an era in which emotions seem increasingly to matter more than facts. Objective
facts are often less influential in shaping opinions than appeals to emotions and beliefs (e.g. in
different types of populist discourse, in which the resort to emotions, such as the exploitation
of fear and resentment, always outweighs reasoned arguments). In this sense, we could say that
post-truth politics is more a symptom of the current social and political status of the truth than
it is their cause (Salgado 2018).
The current changes to the status of the truth are partly explained by the relativism of the
post-modern age that emerged as a response to the unified, definite meanings and universal
truths of the modern age (see, e.g. Foucault [1969] 2002 or Lyotard [1979] 1991). Post-
modernism questions these ideas and values of modernism and proposes a relativism of the truth
(and facts) that lies deep in intersubjectivity and in upholding diversity as an aim in itself. ‘The
difference between modernity and post-modernity lies precisely in the proposal of an ontology
of reality versus a construction of reality, that is, if reality pre-exists to be discovered or if it is
instead constructed through subjective discourse and interpretation’ (Salgado 2018, 321).
In the post-modern world, reality does not pre-exist its interpretation; reality is the negotia-
tion of meaning in each individual that results from the interplay of different factors, including
identity, personal experience and beliefs, and type of media exposure and use. Reality is thus
developed in relation to a specific context and to individual features and assessments. Conse-
quently, not only moral norms (good and bad, right and wrong, etc.) but also what is considered
truth and untruth depends on the context and is subject to diverse, often competing interpreta-
tions and meanings. This ultimately means that there is no absolute or definite truth and that
knowledge and values are constructed through discourse and experience (see, e.g. Rorty 1991).
Such an ethos spurs and gives rise to the co-existence of a wide range of (often contradic-
tory) interpretations of reality and values, which ultimately make the entire search for the truth
a meaningless process as there are several truths and not just one truth. In this respect, post-
modernism perfectly accounts for the post-truth mindset. This approach to reality and knowl-
edge affects the value of the truth and the perception of facts and also has a decisive impact
on democratic politics. There have always been different ideological and partisan positions in
democratic politics, but they would proceed from a shared basis in fact. A society in which there
is no agreed body of facts renders democratic decision-making virtually impossible.
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These are changes that are still unfolding in time, and, in some cases, elements of modernity
subsist in post-modernity (see, e.g. Giddens 1990), but there is nevertheless a noticeable change
in contemporary Western societies that adheres to growing levels of relativism in different
aspects of life, including politics. We are now very likely to find cases in which knowledge and
belief and truth and falsehood are completely blurred.
Before the so-called post-truth era, there was the belief that the truth was out there to be
found and that there were mechanisms based on factual objectivity (e.g. scientific method, jour-
nalistic procedures) to assist those interested in that pursuit. Now, underpinned by technological
advancements, the notions of relativism and subjectivity have been expanded to all domains,
including facts and information. The growing relativism of the truth (and facts) in our socie-
ties could thus lead to situations in which there is no common understanding of basic facts as
their meaning results from the negotiable expression of identities, experiences, opinions, and
preferences. This shift in paradigm and the ensuing consequences for information could lead to
information ecosystems in which diversity (diversity here does not necessarily mean plurality) is
valued and enhanced, but quality does not need to be necessarily part of the equation, particu-
larly if it is achieved at the expense of diversity.
Implications are also noted for moral and ethics standards because they are interpreted
according to context and thus become relative to specific points of view. There is much more
flexibility in the meaning that is attributed to virtually everything, which is also what Bauman
(2007) refers to as ‘liquid’ times. This applies to discourses about scientific facts as well (e.g.
global warming and climate change, vaccination) and to politics, which may pose important
ethical dilemmas, particularly when it impacts not only on political discourses but also on ways
of governing and political action in general.
Much of what is considered post-truth politics is thus explained by the post-modern cultural
ethos, but it is also related to known features of politics and political propaganda that have been
amplified by technology, in particular social media (Salgado 2018). The internet and the digital
culture have caused and intensification and amplification of some of the main features of post-
modernism, and the pace of change has accelerated significantly, which has led some scholars
to suggest new terms to designate the era in which we currently live in (e.g. Nealon’s [2012]
notion of post-post-modernism). In politics, several of post-truth’s most notable features are
actually old attributes. There are important political precedents behind the post-truth era: lies,
rumours, deceits, and manipulation tactics have been used to shape public opinion throughout
history (Salgado 2005).
There is even a long-standing debate on whether deception is good or bad for politics.
Particularly for those sceptical of democracy, deception is seen as an inherent part of politics; it
is not only fully justifiable but also necessary (Robinson et al. 2018). But even the most enthu-
siastic democrat recognises, once in a while, the necessity of governments and political leaders
lying and using deception in specific circumstances. Election campaigns (and other situations of
political competition) are moments in democracy that are commonly noted for stretching the
boundaries of truth and facts as political candidates usually go the extra mile to convince voters,
but crises, in foreign affairs or domestic politics, are deemed to justify the use of deception by
governments.
The work of spin doctors and other political communication professionals is specifically
related to conveying favourable interpretations of events to the media and the public (e.g. Louw
2010; Salgado 2014). Shaping the information environment and preparing the climate of opin-
ion for the announcement of decisions often mean resorting to tactics that are not transparent
and based on authenticity, or even to deception. The use of these tactics entails the selection
and framing of information that is presented in ways that are meant to be, first and foremost,
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Disputes over or against reality?
convincing and appealing. Notwithstanding the excesses that tend to occur due to loose inter-
pretations of what the limits should be, such strategies are considered part of the normal func-
tioning of democracy in today’s societies. Robinson et al. (2018) refer to ‘organised political
communication’ and to the use of deception by lying, omission, distortion, or misdirection.
While politicians produce strategically advantageous interpretations of reality, citizens’ per-
ceptions are also shaped by their choice of medium (Logan 2004) and political preferences (e.g.
Bartels 2002; Jerit and Barabas 2012; Hochschild and Einstein 2015). Biased political com-
munication with the purpose of promoting a specific position – that is to say, hypes and propa-
ganda – acts upon the individuals’ pre-existent political preferences (e.g. political interest and
sophistication, ideology, partisan attachment) and psychological mechanisms that are known to
affect perceptions and attitudes. It is, for example, the case of selective attention, prior-belief
bias, affective bias, and motivated reasoning processes. By choosing content that confirms their
beliefs while avoiding and denying what is divergent and conflicting, individuals tend to expose
themselves to, process, and evaluate information in a biased manner. Selective attention is a
well-known mechanism in cognitive psychology that basically explains that because individu-
als cannot focus on everything all the time, they focus on what matters the most to them (e.g.
Graf and Aday 2008). Motivated reasoning basically means that people’s goals and predisposi-
tions influence how they interpret information (Kunda 1990; Petersen et al. 2013; Stanley et al.
2020). Perceptual biases are shortcuts that individuals use to make sense of the world. Because
they are shortcuts, they only provide a partial understanding and may thus be misleading. For
example, politically motivated reasoning makes individuals view politics through the narrow
lenses of ideology and partisanship. In a polarised context (among others), people are likely to
see their choices as right and good and to evaluate the choices that are different from theirs as
wrong and bad. On the demand side, these shortcuts influence information exposure when
individuals seek information that supports their beliefs and preference, while on the supply side,
resources are devoted to shaping the information environment.
And what now?
In his essays, Eco (2014) suggests that history got tired of leaping forward and has been trying to
catch its breath, contemplating the ‘splendours of tradition’. This could be an interesting image
of the consequences of introducing dramatic changes in the media too quickly into society. In
fact, most accelerated disruptions that have occurred throughout history have immediately trig-
gered opposite, strong reactions against them. This becomes the perfect breeding ground for
the rise of polarised views, which tend to rely on relativism and misinformation to assert the
value of their positions. As Lewandowsky et al. explain, ‘the framing of the current post-truth
malaise as “misinformation” that can be corrected or debunked fails to capture the full scope of
the problem’ (2017, 4).
The use of online media to spread fake information as a deliberate strategy to gain advan-
tage in political conflicts or to reinforce beliefs and polarise opinions is closely related to post-
truth politics. The same holds true for disseminating emotional, confrontational, highly charged
political discourse. All this is propelled by the distrust of facts presented by authorities and a
growing structural relativism that leads to facts being treated as matters of opinion. The imme-
diate outcome is that it becomes more difficult to share and rely on common understandings
of reality.
Given that new forms of producing, spreading, and organising information and of con-
necting individuals have precipitated much of what is now known as the post-truth era, not
to mention that (for commercial reasons) online platforms are organised in ways that favour
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sensationalist, misleading, and polarising information, it seems natural (and pressing) to reflect
on the effects of the particulars of these media landscapes on democracy in order in devise pos-
sible ways forward.
We have just started to experience the disruptive social and political effects of the internet
and of the social media platforms in particular. While the internet has made spreading any idea
easier than ever before, different forms of harmful content and misinformation have become
rather common in online environments. Sophisticated computer algorithms curate the infor-
mation available in specific, purposeful ways, but they also collect and analyse data about users
that is then exploited in various ways to influence those same users.
Consequently, social media platforms have been facing growing pressure from governments
and from users to address the problems, in particular those related to hate speech and fake news.
Censorship and surveillance of online environments have been put forward as possible means
to tackle these problems, but this type of solution is not generally supported in democratic
countries as it would resemble the practice of an authoritarian state and would collide with the
fundamental right of freedom of expression in particular. Nevertheless, action must be taken to
ensure that the internet and social media platforms are compatible with all the other democratic
values.
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