Research Strategies in the Post-Truth Era

Abstract

At the end of 2016 the Oxford Dictionary chose the neologism "post-truth" as word of the year, and at the end of 2017 the term would enter the Dictionary of the Spanish Language of the Royal Spanish Academy with the following definition: 1. f. Deliberate distortion of a reality, which manipulates beliefs and emotions in order to influence public opinion and social attitudes. Demagogues are masters of post-truth. There were two political events that encouraged the committee responsible for the Oxford Dictionary to declare "post-truth" as word of the year: the referendum on Brexit in the UK held on June 23, 2016 and the US Presidential Election held on November 8 of the same year and which, against all odds, Donald Trump won over Hillary Clinton. In both electoral processes the mistreatment of the truth in order to influence public opinion and the appeal to beliefs and emotions, reached unknown quotas for Western democracies not seen since the second half of the twentieth century.