Conspiracies and Radicalization in the "Post-Truth" Era

Course description

What happens when a society begins to equate opinion with fact or when our collective ideas about what's true—like the shape or age of the earth, or the reality of COVID—are challenged by beliefs that undermine the very idea of truth as a concept? We will explore the emergence of what some are calling  the "post-truth" era, where the foundations of the modern age—observation, empiricism and a recognition of the existence of a shared reality—have begun to crumble. We will examine contemporary social media and knowledge-production landscapes to better understand the rapid spread of conspiratorial thinking and extremist ideologies.