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Performative Political Trust and Post-Truth: The Rise of Emo-Truth Politics

Sun, May 27, 14:00 to 15:15, Hilton Old Town, Floor: M, Mozart I

Abstract

This paper sketches a cultural theory of post-truth politics, foregrounding emotion. More than ever, what is true and trustworthy is emotional, especially because emotion has been promoted more recently in professional political communication, after having been previously carefully leveraged to avoid demagoguery accusations; now it’s something that cognitive scientists say is essential to influence. Yet trust must be performed today (as Giddens, building on Goffman and Simmel, noted), and for many political actors and audiences, trustworthiness corresponds to particular emotions: aggressivity, anger/rage, and intimidation. I call this “authentic” political expression “emo-truth.” Exemplars of emo-truth include Trump, leading Brexiters, Phillipines’ Duterte, but also more “ordinary” online expressions. Finally, critical cultural theory meets mainstream political communication studies to ask if mediatization today is structured toward populist, aggressive right-wings in style if not in content. Mediatization scholars perhaps look too exclusively at adaptation to journalism instead of to broader cultural forms and practices.

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