Will the arrival and popularity of Oculus Go and other VR systems make us think differently about alternative realities and so-called alternative facts?
As a crusader for coal, Tony Abbott is an undisputed champion of the emotional logic of ‘truthiness’.
Dan Peled/AAP
Indonesian politicians have engaged in post-truth politics, framing information and stories by appealing to emotions with very little or no regard to any policy details and objective facts.
While specific stories from RT don’t reach many people, they change the mainstream media’s behaviour.
So large are the nation’s daily greenhouse gas emissions that if yours is a typical Australian lifestyle you’re contributing disproportionately to climate change.
Carbon Visuals/flickr
It would take a lifestyle upheaval to drop most Australians’ household emissions to a sustainable level. Even many of us who urge equitable action on climate change act as if this doesn’t apply to us.
While climate denialism impedes policymaking in both the US and Australia, there are key differences in their political and public cultures.
People reject science such as that about climate change and vaccines, but readily believe scientists about solar eclipses, like this one reflected on the sunglasses of a man dangerously watching in Nicosia, Cyprus, in a 2015 file photo.
(AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
People universally believe scientists’ solar eclipse calendars, but vaccine warnings or climate predictions are forms of science that strangely do not enjoy equivalent acceptance.
Trolling is no longer confined to the darker corners of the internet, especially now the U.S. president himself is engaging in it.
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
We’re living in an alternate political universe of brazen lies and grotesque online spectacles of incivility. Who - or what - is to blame for trolling going mainstream?
From Netflix docuseries Making a Murderer.
Netflix
Reports of facts’ death have been greatly exaggerated. Effective communication jettisons the false dilemma in favor of a more holistic view of how people take in new information on contentious topics.
Critics fear the merger of agricultural giants Bayer and Monsanto will drive an increase in use of pesticides.
AgriLife Today/flickr
Pundits have been keen to link post-truth to post-modernists, post-positivists or any other ‘postie’. They should turn their energy to forming a real popular front against Trump’s faux populism.
Solidarity in action.
John Stillwell/PA Archive/PA Images
Populist movements are on the rise. Their supporters distrust the establishment, elites, authority and official sources. The post-truth world is a post-expert world.
Public anxiety about the post-truth era inspired a New York Times advertising campaign.
Beneath simple labels like post-truth, alternative facts and fake news is a complex set of issues. Any debate about the problems needs to start from some common points of reference.
Science is not religion, and we should not have blind faith in its powers.
Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters