Post-truth, fake news and the liberal ‘regime of truth’ – The double movement between Lippmann and Hayek

Abstract

Since the 2016 United States presidential election and the Brexit vote, media scholarship has lamented the state of democratic public communication. Scholars have used the concepts ‘post-truth’ and ‘fake news’ to describe the cocktail of disinformation and devaluation of facts. This article illustrates how ruptures in democratic public communication stem from the contradictions characterising liberalism and its ‘regime of truth’. Liberalism has oscillated between efforts to discipline the media market with such techniques as professional journalism and, on the other hand, the attempt to enhance the position of the market mechanism as a superior knowledge processor. The article builds on the thinking of Walter Lippmann and Friedrich Hayek, two influential liberal thinkers with differing ideas on the role of experts in society. Moreover, Karl Polanyi's concept of ‘double movement’ is used to argue that the problems regarding public communication are systemic features of liberal media logics.

Beyond the discourse of post-truth

“…Entretanto, em grande medida, a maioria destes ideais são subvertidos ou sob a lógica da orientação para o lucro ou devido à falta de diversidade nas casas da mídia. Portanto, mais freqüentemente, em vez de facilitar um debate público nuançado, a mídia reproduz ou confirma as posições discursivas de saída (KRANSI, 2021;HARJUNIEMI, 2021). Por exemplo, no caso da mídia indiana de casta alta, a reportagem sobre a casta em geral e a reserva, em particular, tem sido altamente partidária e, às vezes, seletiva, factualmente incorreta, e feita com a intenção de descartar a política de reserva.…”

Health Security, Vaccine Hesitancy and Post-Truth: A Case of COVID-19 in Pakistan

“…In a post-truth context, 'trust crisis' is the lack of trust in government policies and disregard for empirical/scientific and informed evidence. In a post-truth and fake news world, and on account of emotional appeal and sensational decision, trust deficit vis-à-vis vaccination has fairly been amplified (Harjuniemi, 2021). Interestingly, the digital/social/new media has acted, both as a structure and an agency, moulding public values and setting agenda.…”

“…As a murky concept without a singular definition or conceptual description, post-truth has generated appreciable academic appraisal over the past many years. In 2016, it was declared the ‘word of the year’ by the Oxford Dictionaries (Bufacchi, 2020; Harjuniemi, 2021). According to the Oxford Dictionaries (2016), post-truth refers to circumstances ‘in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.…”

“…Conceptually, the idea of post-truth is an affront against the regime of truth. It means having an opposite view, a fearless and careless view/speech that challenges the monopoly and truth regime (Foucault, 1980) or what scholars refer to as the hierarchy of truth (Glanzberg, 2015), or the hierarchical system of truth-telling (Harjuniemi, 2021). The careless speech/view associated with post-truth literally indicates the state of being unperturbed by ‘verifiable truth’.…”

“…In a post-truth world, the whole epistemic structure is not only critiqued but also challenged and disrupted – the whole exercise becomes the deconstruction of what may be construed as accurate representation of reality (Harjuniemi, 2021). This epistemic crisis (Dahlgren, 2018), though unique in its own right, yet is reminiscent of the centuries old battle between positivism and non-positivist epistemic stances.…”