The Post-Truth Era
If anything has completely changed our culture, it has been the internet. The internet is an enhanced form of technology that has made it so that people can get information faster than ever before, which some would say has made our lives better and easier. The internet has created a culture of unity through education, where people can learn things about others and the world in a more detailed way than ever before. On the other hand, it has also created a society in which people are detached from one another, and they no longer need to rely on real human communication and connection in order to retrieve information. Thus, the internet contributes to the post-truth era that we currently live in today. The internet has created an exponential growth in extremism, conspiracy theories, and a decline in trust of our social, economic, and political institutions.
In the past, the supposed “truth” was established within different forms of publications, whether that be in the form of newspapers, journals, news articles, or research reports. Publications by major media outlets and authors contributed to the validity of information. In the postmodern era, the vast range of the internet opens an entirely new world of information and new ways of spreading that information. Social media and fake news sources are strong platforms for creating conspiracy theories. Websites like Twitter gives users the opportunity to create threads of information, linking different sources. Sources of articles on social media sites range from satire news websites, to tabloids, to legitimate news sites such as the New York Times. With the widened scope of today’s version of the internet, these sources begin to blur the lines between truth, partial truth, and complete falsity.
In my own personal life, I choose to manage the post-truth era through the people I follow on social media. On twitter specifically, I choose to follow fact-checking journalists for political issues. Journalists like Daniel Dale fact check every claim or news report from journalists and news stations across the country. He keeps up with all of the correct facts and reports them by quoting misinformation and commenting with the confirmation or denial of the claim. In other news reports, I like to get my news information from major sources like the New York Times, NPR, or CNN. If I see something by an unverified user with a lot of retweets or attention, I Google the article to see if an established news agency has picked up on it. Reading the article rather than just the headline is a good way to fight off fake news as well. Similar to “clickbait” on sites like youtube, news agencies tend to do the same thing. This move by journalists and major corporations is why there are so many conspiracy twists on social media these days. The rabbit hole that conspiracy claims leads us down is the main reason why so many people question if there are hidden agendas and secrets the government and other major institutions are keeping from the common people.
As a society, we should be holding each other accountable when it comes to fake news and our actions within this post-truth era. I think there need to be more journalists, like Daniel Dale, that hold their colleagues accountable on media platforms. I also think that as a society, we need to take into consideration that the news will never be the same. There will always be extremists with their own beliefs and followers, that we will never be to fully eliminate now that they exist. The internet has created a spectrum that is so extreme, that it has made even the most advanced minds question the validity of the information presented to them. For example, looking at the COVID-19 pandemic, there were doctors that made an entire conspiracy video that circulated on Youtube. The video had doctors explain the beginning of the COVID pandemic and basically made COVID seem like a hoax. There was a huge uproar in mask wearing debates during this time and we were made to believe by watching the video that COVID-19 was made in a lab and deliberately manipulated and spread. However, we know that the virus is real and that other countries who do not have the same alt-right political parties as the US, have successfully mended their surges in their cases.
The internet has created a platform for conspiracy and alt-right political parties to spread their information and popularity quickly and widely. Because of new websites and social media, it is easy for us to fall victim to clickbait and fake news, without doing proper research to verify the facts. We need to hold ourselves and each other accountable for our claims on social media because all it takes is one post, tweet, or thread to completely dismantle the truth.
