Infrastructure and the Post-Truth Era: is Trump Twitter’s Fault?

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between social media and political rhetoric. Social media platforms are frequently discussed in relation to ‘post-truth’ politics, but it is less clear exactly what their role is in these developments. Specifically, this paper focuses on Twitter as a case, exploring the kinds of rhetoric encouraged or discouraged on this platform. To do this, I will draw on work from infrastructure studies, an area of Science and Technology Studies; and in particular, on Ford and Wajcman’s analysis of the relationships between infrastructure, knowledge claims and politics on Wikipedia. This theoretical analysis will be supplemented with evidence from previous studies and in the public domain, to illustrate the points made. This analysis echoes wider doubts about the credibility of technologically deterministic accounts of technology’s relationship with society, but suggests however that while Twitter may not be the cause of shifts in public discourse, it is implicated in them, in that it both creates new norms for discourse and enables new forms of power and inequality to operate.

Critical intellectuals in postdigital times

“…Indeed -authors like Jodi Dean (Dean, Medak, and Jandrić, 2019), and Henry Frankfurt (2005), have been writing about similar issues in great depth decades ago. But -and it is a truly big but -the post-truth condition has arrived into prominence with the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and especially his use of Twitter (Oliver, 2020). This sudden bout of popularity did not arrive from thin air -it was based on technological developments that have allowed expansion of post-truth rhetoric to previously unforeseen heights.…”

The Mortal Coil of Covid-19, Fake News, and Negative Epistemic Postdigital Inculcation

“…However, digital media usage is not benign; digital media directly affects what we do, particularly with respect to fact-checking and spreading information. Twitter, for example, was created and designed specifically as an online social networking platform with which we can share information such as personal opinions or status updates (Oliver 2020 ). Resultantly, its design lacked features to promote the authentication of information because it was initially created to share personal opinions.…”

“…Resultantly, its design lacked features to promote the authentication of information because it was initially created to share personal opinions. As Oliver ( 2020 : 27) explains: ‘there is no provision structured into the logic of Twitter for “fact checking”, verification, review or marshalling evidence’. With a click of a digital button, we can expeditiously retweet fact or fiction, and not consider its truth or falsity because the platform enables us to do so.…”

A Critical Look at Post-Truth Thinking

“…The central idea of this article is that with the proliferation of thinking about the "post-truth era", an attempt is being made to build a mentally immobilized global society, an aspect based on the assumptions of the fourth generation war, which has transnational monopoly power as its axis. What we are dealing with is the manipulation of psychological factors that ignotize human consciousness, using the electronic-informatics revolution [7,8].…”