Post-truth is called a distortion of reality that is deliberately carried out to influence people's opinions and behavior. Post-truth is based on the manipulation of emotions .
It is also interesting to know the etymological origin of this term that concerns us now. Thus, we can establish that it emanates from Latin. More specifically, we can determine that it is the result of the sum of two elements of that language: the prefix “post-”, which can be translated as “after”, and the noun “veritas”, which is synonymous with “truth”.
The term is usually used with reference to content disseminated by the media or by political leaders that is presented as news or objective data, but in reality they are assertions that appeal to the beliefs of individuals. Thus, what is expressed is perceived as true even if it is not.
Other interesting facts about post-truth are that it takes advantage of the confusion and also the laziness of human beings to think and reflect. This without overlooking the fact that it aims to “muddy up” society.
The concept is a translation of post-truth , an expression of the English language. Playwright Steve Tesich is considered to have coined the notion in an article he published in 1992 .
The word became popular in the 21st century and was even chosen as the “word of the year” by the Oxford dictionary in 2016 . The massification of the phenomenon is usually associated with social networks , where the truth remains in the background and emotions are privileged.
Post-truth is evident when objective and proven facts are relativized . Regardless of whether there are hundreds of tests and years of research, an event can be questioned from Facebook or Twitter and that view ends up influencing public opinion.
Suppose that, in a certain country, a foreigner commits a crime. Faced with this situation, a nationalist politician claims that immigrants are responsible for the insecurity in the nation . Although official statistics show that foreigners are the perpetrators of a tiny percentage of crimes, the statement is taken as valid and repeated by thousands of subjects, contributing to the post-truth phenomenon.
We must know that, in recent years, post-truth has become very present fundamentally in many countries in which politicians try to come to power or stay in power based on distortions of reality and manipulated and subjective data. This would be the case, for example, of Donald Trump in the United States, of Bolsonaro in Brazil and even of Santiago Abascal in Spain.
What's more, there are those who clearly point out that post-truth was responsible for Trump ending up becoming president of the United States.
Post-truth is a very dangerous "weapon." And a long list of personalities have so far reported on that. These include, for example, the English humanist and philosopher AC Grayling. He has gone so far as to state that this can clearly become a clear and forceful attack as well as damage to “the entire fabric of democracy.”