The Theory of Post-Truth. Identification and Limitation of Fake News

Abstract

The paper presents the theoretical and research aspects of media interrelations among the phenomena of post-truth, fake news, populist statements, and the use of alternative facts in political communication. It conducts a comparative analysis of these concepts and analyzes illustrative examples from the media environment in which the terms operate in the same information discourse. The main focus is on two key academic empirical studies whose theoretical and empirical scholarly approaches point to the main thesis of this paper – that post-truth and fake news create an emotional context of information perception and that this is the basis on which consumers and voters shape their behavior, reactions, understandings and views.