How to hijack a discourse? Reflections on the concepts of post-truth and fake news

The paper interrogates how the notions of post-truth and fake news have emerged, shifted meaning, and been mobilized across public, media, and academic domains. It situates the current “post-truth politics” discussion—often framed by mainstream media and a broad scholarly literature—as part of a longer trajectory beginning with left/liberal critiques of media in the late 20th century, through the 2010s focus on fake news, to contemporary claims that post-truth is linked to science denial and derives from postmodern or left populist thought. The study aims to: (1) reconstruct the historical reconceptualization of post-truth; (2) examine how fake news discourse operates around social networks and public relevance; and (3) show how post-truth has been redirected against the intellectual traditions from which it emerged.

The article reviews and synthesizes multiple strands: (a) early articulations of “post-truth” (Tesich, 1992) as a left/liberal critique of U.S. media and political power; (b) Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model and the “five filters” shaping mainstream news production and legitimizing establishment interests; (c) Crouch’s Post-Democracy, emphasizing concentrated media power and constrained public choice; (d) Keyes’ The Post-Truth Era, including cases of fabrication in prestige outlets and the role of online rumor, as well as the rise of fact-checking; (e) Alternman’s analysis of U.S. media-political-economic entanglements in the 1990s/2000s and the self-conception of mainstream outlets as liberal-democratic guardians; and (f) contemporary media and academic debates around social networks, gatekeeping, monetization, and platform power (e.g., Oxford/Collins word-of-the-year entries; Guardian, NYT, Washington Post materials; discussions of targeting, profiling, and Cambridge Analytica). The review also notes the discursive use of “fake news” as a floating signifier to delegitimize ideological opponents (e.g., alt-right vs. mainstream media), and conservative critiques that trace “post-truth” to postmodernism and left intellectual traditions.

The study employs a Foucauldian archaeological approach to trace the historical formation and successive rearticulations of the post-truth concept within its discourse field, combined with Agamben’s notion of the apparatus to analyze how composite concepts operate across domains. It conducts a qualitative, comparative discourse analysis of heterogeneous sources—journalistic texts, media self-representations (e.g., Washington Post branding), public intellectual interventions, and academic literature—across ideological positions. The analysis focuses on how key actors (mainstream media, social networks, academics, conservative and liberal intellectuals) define problems, assign responsibility, and deploy post-truth/fake news to pursue discursive interests, with illustrative cases such as social media monetization and targeting, fact-checking, and the Cambridge Analytica controversy.

- The concept of post-truth originated as a left/liberal critique of political and media power (e.g., Tesich, Herman & Chomsky) but has undergone successive discursive shifts, culminating in its redeployment by mainstream media and conservative/right-wing intellectuals against postmodern and left traditions. - Mainstream media have developed a self-conception as defenders of democracy and truth, yet this often coexists with commercial and political entanglements that shape gatekeeping and agenda-setting; quality journalism can reproduce establishment narratives rather than pursue complex factuality. - In the 2010s, social networks catalyzed a reconfiguration of fake news discourse around four topics: (1) platform-driven attention economies and monetization that reward sensational content; (2) openness to diverse and ‘alien’ actors, complicating traditional gatekeeping; (3) pervasive data harvesting enabling precise profiling and targeted advertising; and (4) concerns about psychological manipulation (e.g., emotion contagion experiments, microtargeting). - The Cambridge Analytica case exposed profiling and targeting practices long embedded in political communication, highlighting inconsistent media framings—more normalized for domestic use, framed as problematic in the context of foreign meddling. - Fact-checking institutions and calls to restore gatekeeping have become integral to the post-truth apparatus, yet may also reproduce existing power asymmetries and discursive interests. - “Fake news” functions as a floating signifier used by competing actors to delegitimize opponents (e.g., alt-right vs. mainstream outlets), contributing to a polarized discursive field rather than resolving epistemic issues. - Illustrative data points emphasize structural shifts: for example, estimates that Facebook and Google together captured about 85% of U.S. digital ad spend (2016), underscoring the platforms’ economic centrality to attention and news distribution.

By tracing the archaeology of post-truth, the paper shows that current debates are not novel departures but reconfigurations of longstanding critiques of media power. The findings address the research aims by demonstrating: (1) how post-truth moved from left/liberal media criticism to a widely appropriated label wielded by mainstream media and conservative intellectuals; (2) how fake news discourse organizes public concerns about social networks around monetization, gatekeeping, profiling, and manipulation; and (3) how contemporary critiques often conflate post-truth with postmodern or left traditions to delegitimize them. The significance lies in revealing the strategic, interest-laden deployment of post-truth/fake news across domains and the risks of essentialist, emotion-based argumentation that mixes epistemology with moral claims. The study argues that poststructuralist methods remain vital for critically examining these actors and for maintaining a reflexive stance toward truth claims, expertise, and power.

The archaeology of post-truth reveals recurring mechanisms of indignation over lies and affective orchestration of public opinion that have persisted since the concept’s inception. While the term began as a left/liberal critique of media and political power, its contemporary iterations show how it has been appropriated and redirected against its originating intellectual milieu, often to police alternatives to dominant narratives. The fake news discourse operates as an expression of broader discursive struggles among media, political, and academic actors. Investigative efforts exposing platform malpractices are important but tend to arise belatedly or selectively, especially when aligned with externalized threats. Conflating post-truth with postmodern or left thought obscures distinctions between methodological critique and moral or scientific truth claims. The paper concludes that poststructuralist analytical tools are well-suited to sustaining critical scrutiny of powerful social actors and the post-truth apparatus. Future research should further examine non-Anglophone and non-Western discursive formations, and empirically map how institutional incentives shape the deployment of post-truth/fake news across contexts.

The study is conceptual and discursive rather than empirical; it relies on publicly available sources and illustrative cases. The focus is primarily on Anglophone debates and materials, which limits generalizability across regions and languages. Some topics (e.g., bots/automation, detailed foreign influence operations) are noted but not analyzed in depth. The analysis references media artifacts (e.g., videos, stills) that are described rather than reproduced due to permissions constraints. As an interpretive archaeology, the work does not offer quantitative measures of effect size or causal inference.