Is the inevitable consequence of our postmodern distrust grand narratives: religion, politics, the rule of law, education; a world in which there is no truth? Are we doomed to increasingly acrimonious arguments over our personal truths, which are often simply uninformed opinion and those with the loudest voice (or more dominant media presence) getting to define the truth for the rest of us, which is the definition of hegemony?
So, What is The Truth in a Post Fact World?
The News and its Gatekeepers
In the past the news was controlled by TV & Newspaper editors who used ethical guidelines developed over time to define news values which were used to decide which stories to run and which stories got the most interest.
The values were defined in a work but Galtung and Ruge in 1965. They showed that stories about the homes of the news outlet took more importance than stories about other people and cultures. So hegemony is certainly not a new phenomena.
However newspapers and TV news are in decline. News is expensive to make and people don’t want to pay for it.
Reuters reported that 28% of 18-24 years olds use Facebook as their main source of news! Who edits the content we receive on Facebook?
Answer: nobody!
Well these days it is algorithms which are the news editors of the 21st Century. These bits of software are designed to predict what we like and promote those preferences based our search history & location on on our feeds.
This leads to…
Filter Bubbles & The Echo Chamber
Click Bait and the Amplification of Fake News
An algorithm can find it very difficult to distinguish fact from opinion. They can’t tell if the story they are promoting in our feeds is irrelevant or massively biased in favour of one groups opinions.
This means that fake news will appear next to genuine news stories that do follow the journalistic imperatives of balance and evidence. It then is down to the audience to use their critical faculties to distinguish the genuine stories from the fakes.
A Post Truth Post Modern World has frightening results like…
- Former education secretary Michael Gove claiming, during the Brexit debate of 2016, that British people, ‘have had enough of experts’!
- Trump claiming that. ‘He has kept more promises than he made!’
- ‘250,000 Syrian refugees had been placed on Native American Indian reservations.’ Was a claim made by satirical site ‘Real News Right Now’, and was picked up and repeated by Fox News and President Trump.
The truth is a hostage to the narratives of the elites. This is HEGEMONY!!!!
