What is it about?
The article outlines a theory of shifting globalizing cultural conditions that are the basis of post-truth politics: namely, institutional and social trust and attention. Since post-truth is a condition that journalists and others name and document as real, a truth regime may be shifting into a regime of post-trust. It's not that truth is gone but that distrust is so rampant that consequently truths also proliferate--with many troubling political and social effects.
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Why is it important?
This is the first academic article to speak of regimes of post-truth and provide a larger scholarly critique of post-truth politics. Popular discussions of post-truth have not adequately dealt with the relationship between institutions, citizens and trust; professional political communication that has systematically worked to undermine that trust; and newer effects of algorithms, habits and attention that can be exploited by post-truth politics.
Perspectives
This article is a short but readable introduction to a more complex historical, cultural, and economically attentive theory of why there's a "post--truth" and fake news panic. Powerful forces have long been cultivating the conditions in which "post-truth" politics can flourish. As always, solving the problem first requires understanding its complexity and roots.
Jayson Harsin
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Regimes of Posttruth, Postpolitics, and Attention Economies, Communication Culture and Critique, February 2015, Oxford University Press (OUP),
DOI: 10.1111/cccr.12097.
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