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posted by janrinok on Thursday November 17 2016, @06:04PM   Printer-friendly

Oxford Dictionaries has declared "post-truth" as its 2016 international word of the year, reflecting what it called a "highly-charged" political 12 months. It is defined as an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals. Its selection follows June's Brexit vote [in the UK], and the US presidential election. Post-truth, which has become associated with the phrase "post-truth politics", was chosen ahead of other political terms, including "Brexiteer" and "alt-right".

[...] Oxford Dictionaries says post-truth is thought to have been first used in 1992. However, it says the frequency of its usage increased by 2,000% in 2016 compared with last year.

Mr Grathwohl said: "Fuelled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth as a concept has been finding its linguistic footing for some time," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37995600
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016

Would you have chosen something different?


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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday November 17 2016, @07:53PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 17 2016, @07:53PM (#428300) Journal

    What's that? If you reach for an excuse you can find a reason to ignore anything that disagrees with you and your "rule of thumb" can be freely discarded when it tells you the opposite of what you want to hear?

    What a never-before-seen approach to discussions on the internet. Certainly not part of the cause of this whole nonsense we're experiencing. Definitely.

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