BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Do we live in a ‘Post-Truth’ era?

    Ahlstrom-Vij, Kristoffer (2021) Do we live in a ‘Post-Truth’ era? Political Studies , ISSN 0032-3217.

    [img]
    Preview
    Text (Reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses)
    44894.pdf - Author's Accepted Manuscript

    Download (676kB) | Preview

    Abstract

    Have we entered a ‘post-truth’ era? This article is an attempt to answer this question by (a) offering an explication of the notion of ‘post-truth’ from recent discussions, (b) deriving a testable implication from that explication, to the effect that we should expect to see decreasing information effects – that is, differences between actual preferences and estimated, fully informed preferences – on central political issues over time and then (c) putting the relevant narrative to the test by way of counterfactual modelling, using election year data for the period of 2004–2016 from the American National Election Studies’ Times Series Study. The implication in question turns out to be consistent with the data: at least in a US context, we do see evidence of a decrease in information effects on key, political issues – immigration, same-sex adoption and gun laws, in particular – in the period 2004–2016. This offers some novel, empirical evidence for the ‘post- truth’ narrative.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): post truth, political epistemology, information effects
    School: School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy > Philosophy
    Depositing User: Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij
    Date Deposited: 21 Jul 2021 17:19
    Last Modified: 17 Nov 2022 00:57
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/44894

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    180Downloads
    6 month trend
    160Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item Edit/View Item