An Interdisciplinary Anatomy of Post-truth

Catalog description

If one were to examine post-truth as a form of knowledge reconstruction, one would have to explore the multidisciplinary roots of this phenomenon. The post-truth age, in a sense, is derived from numerous epistemic fields. It is the byproduct of media representations of contested “facts”, a society of data and attention economy, cognitive bias and psychological warfare, political weaponization of virtual platforms, and longstanding philosophical debates on the mere meanings of truth and socially constructed realities. With so many origins, causes, and ramifications linked to post-truth, some scholars have even wondered whether the term truly has an explanatory power of intricate social predicaments. Little wonder, then, that skeptics of its validity have reduced it to a fashionable semantic trick that, albeit has gained currency in recent year, is devoid of real depth in meaning. Notwithstanding, the term has derived its significance precisely from this currency. It has also gained prominence because of its intertwinement with an ongoing process of digital convergence that is inevitably changing our lives. In this course, we shall unpack this process while anatomizing the concept of post-truth from various disciplinary perspectives. By the end of the semester, we aim to have a better understanding of the meaning of one of the most vastly used terms since we – as social beings – came to realize that we have been entrapped in bubbles of hyperreality.