Truth-Telling in the Post-Truth Era: Moral and Epistemic Boundaries Between Liberals and Conservatives in the US

• In Event: Culture in/of Unsettled Times

Abstract

Truth-telling and fact-grounding are often considered central to democracy and integral to one another. In today’s post-truth era, their relationship seems precarious; yet, appeals—and declared commitment—to truth continue to characterize the rhetoric of both those who support facts and those who deny them. What does democratic truth-telling come to signify in the post-truth era? How can violating the norm of fact-grounding become a form of democratic truth-telling? I analyze media discourse about false claims by U.S. political representatives across the political spectrum during the 2024 presidential election campaign through the lens of boundary-making. I show that the conservative and liberal media’s discourse surrounding false statements engages in negotiations over the very meaning of truth and reality by embedding them in moralized stories. In so doing, they erect not only moral but also epistemic boundaries between their in-group and out-group, differentiating legitimate and illegitimate claims to knowledge and evidence, and appropriate and inappropriate democratic conduct. Ultimately, this analysis reveals that U.S. liberals and conservatives often disagree over basic social-epistemological categories (e.g., truth, facts) that structure their knowledge of the world, eroding the kind of dialogue that is foundational for democratic deliberation.

Author

• Elena De Leo, University of California-San Diego