Joy to the World: The Satisfaction of Post-truth
by Ignas Kalpokas
pp. 16-35 Issue 12 (6,2) – July-December 2019 ISSN (online): 2539/2239 ISSN (print): 2389-8232 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14718/SoftPower.2019.6.2.2
Abstract
This article aims to uncover the key preconditions and characteristics of post-truth as well as the contextual factors explaining its appeal. The key factor appears to be post- truth’s ability to incite pleasure, in terms of both it being unconstrained by veracity and the advance and the capacity to know what the necessary pleasure-inciting variables are through big data analysis. That neatly corresponds with the general rise to prominence of satisfaction and affective mobilisation in competition over increasingly scarce audience attention, making post-truth a distinctly contemporary phenomenon.