Towards a New Paradigm on Post-Truth

With speaker Anam Kuraishi, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Antwerp. 

Post-truth became a buzzword in politics with the advent of Donald Trump’s presidency in the United States and Nigel Farage’s bid for power during the BREXIT Referendum in the United Kingdom. Post-truth is predominantly discussed with misinformation and fake news where truth has become secondary and has rendered it as an attack on the sanctity of politics and democracy. This book challenges the common wisdom of ascribing post-truth with a negative connotation and associating it with the crisis of democracy.  Instead, the book proposes that the concept of post-truth should be rethought as political discourse structured around the articulation of desire and outlines a framework for conducting empirical research on post-truth. Using the case of Pakistan, the book identifies post-truth electoral narratives in newspapers and investigates the effects of post-truth rhetoric and desire-based framing on political attitudes. This book offers insights into the significant effects of post-truth rhetoric on polarization and episodes of autocratization.

 Biography

Anam Kuraishi is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Antwerp. Her research is grounded in political communication, focusing on affective rhetoric and political behaviour of parties and citizens,  and broadly on democratic backsliding. Her new book Towards a New Paradigm on Post-Truth, reframes the concept of post-truth as political discourse. Dr Kuraishi received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Essex.