Post-truth is a philosophical and political concept for "the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth"[1] and the "circuitous slippage between facts or alt-facts, knowledge, opinion, belief, and truth".[2] Post-truth discourse is often contrasted with the forms taken by scientific methods and inquiry.[3] The term garnered widespread popularity, in the form of "post-truth politics", in the period around the 2016 United States presidential election and the Brexit referendum. It was named Word of the Year in 2016 by the Oxford Dictionary where it is defined as "Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief".[4][5]
While the term post-truth is relatively recent, the concept can be traced back to earlier moral, epistemic, and political debates about relativism, postmodernity, and mendacity in politics, including nontruthfulness, lies, deception, and deliberate falsehood.[6]
