Bad times for public discourse

Abstract

I am adapting the famous title of Brecht (1939), “Bad time for poetry”, to refer to the growing distortion and disinformation suffered by our public discourse. It matters to know their assumptions and projections if we want to deal with this process of deterioration and, if possible, stop it or even, being more optimistics, revert its course. So, after a brief review of the most well-known variants (hoax, bullshit, fake news, etc.), I will focus on their status as modalities of post-truth, i. e “deliberate distortion of a reality, that manipulates beliefs and opinions in order to influence public opinion and social attitudes” (DLE, 2018), with three purposes: (1) to declare the various reasons (philosophical and ideological, psychological and technological) that underlie post-truth development; (2) denounce its disposition as manipulative, mendacious and, ultimately, fallacious in the field of public discourse; and (3) consider our chances of detecting, preventing and lessening these toxic effects.