The Post-Truth age: What is this really about? - II

Abstract

Debates on ‘post truth’ have become a visible staple of recent STS, the word having gathered media and journalistic attraction — though mostly in the Angloshpere — to include discussions and commentaries in some of the main journals in the field such as Social Studies of Science and Engaging Science, Technology and Society. However, most papers and books published on the subject of ‘post truth’ (within and outside STS) are presented in the form of essays or reflections that are based on little or no firsthand systematic, empirical research, and with limited geographic diversity. In this panel, we propose to bring together STS scholars interested in debating what it means to live in a post-truth age — if we are indeed living in such a new age at all — based on empirical studies. Thus, while ‘post truth’ is most commonly associated with the idea that contemporary societies have entered a period in which facts matter less to public opinion than emotions and personal beliefs, there remains much to be worked out in terms of what, in this respect, distinguishes the current age from others. In this panel we seek to bring together papers based on research that seeks to either rectify or destabilize a taken for-granted, definitive and universalist definition of ‘the post-truth age’, based on evidence of changes to contemporary societies, in a wider variety of contexts, which would justify adopting such an all-embracing concept.

Individual Presentations

• From vaccines to masks: The manipulation of science to cause doubt - Kolina Koltai, University of Washington

• Post-truth and Climate Change Denialism in Brazil - Jean Carlos Hochsprung Miguel, Federal University of São Paulo

• Post-truth during the Covid-19 pandemic: Jair Bolsonaro´s denialism and personalist epistemology - Tiago Ribeiro Duarte, University of Brasília

Session Organizer

• Luis Ignacio Reyes-Galindo