Post-truth politics (also called
post-factual politics) is a
political culture in which debate is framed largely by
appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of
policy, and by the repeated assertion of
talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored.
Post-truth differs from traditional contesting and falsifying of
truth by rendering it of "secondary" importance. According to
Oxford Dictionaries, the term
post-truth was first used in a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright
Steve Tesich in
The Nation. Tesich, writing about the
Iran–Contra scandal and the
Persian Gulf War, said that "we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world."
[1]
The contemporary origin of the term is attributed to blogger David Roberts who used the term in 2010 in a column for
Grist.
[2][3][4] Political commentators have identified post-truth politics as ascendant in American, Australian, British, Indian and Turkish politics, as well as in other areas of debate, driven by a combination of the
24-hour news cycle,
false balance in news reporting, and the increasing ubiquity of
social media.
[4][5][6][7][8][9]