This blog is in response to the task as a part of Sunday Reading and also critical thinking of The term Post-Truth assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Department of English, MKBU.In this blog I am going to present my understanding of the Word Post-Truth and I will also deal with some examples related to it.
"Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."
Post-Truth is a term that refers to widespread documentation of and concerns about disputes over public truth claims. Post-Truth as a contemporary phenomenon is not "What is Truth?", but "Why don't we agree that this is or that is true?" While referring to the word Post-Truth, we may at first sight apply the prefix Post as time after specified situation or event. Like in post-war. But the word post truth refers to the idea to belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become an important or irrelevant.
To understand the word and its definition, we have to look towards three major parts of it.
Fact: A piece of information presented as having objective reality.
Truth: The body of real things, events, and facts, the property of being in accord with fact or reality and forcing somebody to be objectively truth must be a fact.
Opinion: Belief stronger that impression or less strong than positive knowledge or A view, judgement, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter. Opinions are the product of one's feelings.
We are in one or the other are getting opinions, a kind of manipulation in disguise of Fact or truth, which is completely opposite of it. Emotional manipulation has become an inevitable part of modern truths. We all are becoming more and more emotional rather than rational so that we are easily trapped into the information which is not true at all. Here it is very essential to differentiate two words, 1. Information and 2. Fact. There is a very wide as well as slight difference between these two words. For example, news is a kind of information supplied by Newspapers and Social Media, doesn't mean it is true or Factual. We can also say that the information can never be categorised as a part of Fact, it can also be fake. And it is very easy to turn a fake into fact nowadays.
Nowadays it has become very easy to turn Fake into Fact. And that is why the word Post-Truth has been chosen as a word of the year 2016. Fact checking is now becoming very important to be away from various fake news. The harsh reality of today's time is we accept that and never try to check whether it is true or not. Social Medias are the sources to spread these kinds of things very quickly. We can say that they never present the whole truth. It can be either half truth or complete lie.
There are two important aspects of Post-Truth, which are spreading many fake things, which are also very important to build the Nation or Society.
Post-Truth in Politics
Post-Truth in Social media/news/journalism
Let's have look of both of this aspects,
★Post-Truth in politics:-
In this form of post-truth politics, false rumours become major news topics. Lies can be used to get others to form false believes and garner their support. It is well known that false information can influence people's thinking even after they come to realise the information is false. This makes it particularly concerning when people in leadership position lie.
According to the research, former United States President Donald Trump famously made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims during the four year of his presidency. This is an average of more than 20 a day.
It is an example of foreign country, latest have a look at the current Indian political sphere.
So, these three images are about how untruths are accepted and we are not even raising our voice. GST now applied on food items as well. For this we can take an example that when Britishers laided tax on Salt, Gandhiji started Dandi kuch movement to stop the tax. This is the same India and our government as they always says, it also imitating the same Idea then why we are not raising voice against this things. The only reason is we are not checking the fact or we can say we don't want to apply our mind.
Michael Deaton of The Daily Telegraph, summarising the core message of post-Truth politics, says,, “Facts are negative, Facts are pessimistic, and Facts are unpatriotic.” In the Indian context, we may add a few more adjectives to Facts: “Facts are seditious, Facts are anti-social, or anti-national, Facts disturb social harmony, or they incite hatred.”
★Post-Truth in Social Media/news/journalism
Due to the developments in information technologies in the last 20 years, social media is frequently used especially for mobile devices for news announcement and follow-up. This has led to a large increase in the number of information produced, too. Considering information/news sharing pages on social media around the world and sharing/posting too much information or news, there are many news sources that need to be verified after being accessed. There is no accurate filtering process in the dissemination of information on social media and therefore, unverifiable news can affect the masses in a very short time. Nowadays, it is important that users check the reality of such information in social media.
Social media are very vital to spread news or facts, at the same time we can see that by the name of sharing facts, they are the main cause to spread fake news instead of fact. We are having free media but I don't think media is free. They present what is happening, not the fact behind the situation and they are even spreading lies. And whoever tries to check the truth or presents truth is either killed or imprisoned. Let's take a very recent example of India, where a reporter is accused of was checking facts and proves false news as false.
"The voice of dissent is necessary for healthy Democracy."
This news also shows that there are only a few who are checking facts. Because it is very complex to do. Below picture shows that majority people choose simple way, which is not truth.
While talking about The media in the post-truth era, In the post-truth world, a far-right embrace of social media threatens the broadcasting of truth, Ahmed Al Sheikh, the former chief editor of Al Jazeera Arabic states that,
Mainstream media must use social media tools intensively in order to defend the truth, present the correct information and balance opinions. Here he also witnesses that media are disseminating untruths.
Here he also talks about untruths disseminated by Donald Trump. To read more about the article Click here.
In the book, "Myth of Free media and Fake news in the Post-Truth era", writer Kalinga Senevirante gives the same idea of Fake news spread by free media.
In the cover photo of the book, we can see a man who can't see or speak, as per my interpretation of the poster, we are now not allowed to speak or even see the fact and it will be true if I will say we don't want to watch and speak.
As a part of critical thinking development, the Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University organised a two day thinking skills workshop by Dr. Milan Pandya sir. This workshop is very much related to the Term Post-Truth.
Thinking means when we start to apply our Mind on anything that we come across. We should not accept the thing as it is presented or shown to us. Anyone can be wrong while presenting something. We need to be Skeptical, because only this thing led us to the truth. At that time it is necessary for us to go into the roots and find out the truth. In this workshop Milan Pandya sir gave some examples of people who are at a very high position and spreading untruths. Yes, this is also true that they might not be aware of the fact, but the harsh reality is that we are not even checking whether it is true or not and disseminate the same news. Actually We are addicted to untruths, we can't even try to look at the thing critically.
He explained that context is everything. When we look at anything we have to be critical about what else has to be true. For this also he uses line,
"If something is true, what else has to be true in that."
That means to look within the truth. We also have to think whether the thing is Possible or Plausible. And have found that we all are just looking at possibilities not Plausibility. Yes, possibility is an inevitable part of thinking, but it is always necessary to look at its plausibility. And that’s what makes a man Rational animal. For that it is necessary to be Skeptical. Click here For complete explanation of the Thinking Skills workshop.
To conclude my blog I want to say that applying mind and finding facts are two essential aspects of the modern world.I hope this blog will help you to understand the concept of Post-Truth.
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