Cosentino Gabriele. Social Media And The Post-Truth World Order. The Global Dynamics of Disinformation

Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. — 151 p. — ISBN 978-3-030-43004-7Finally, we have a theory of post-truth that emerges from an international or global analysis. In this excellent development of empirically-grounded post-truth theory, Cosentino moves from well-known cases such as Pizzagate and Russian trolls in the U.S. 2016 presidential election, to cases that have received little to no attention in media and political communication studies, such as the “White Helmets” rumors amplif i ed by Russian media in the Syrian civil war, the Facebook hate speech campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar, and the disinformation apparatus that propelled Bolsonaro to power in Brazil.
Cosentino’s analysis is also unique in its attention to the use of an array of platforms and spaces of media that are exploited for disinformative and misin-formative purposes, including 4chan and 8chan, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, in addition to traditional news media. His work engages with the problems of in-ternational political economy in the post-truth matrix, especially how the agents of post-truth exploit the weaknesses of media laws. Finally, he does not shy away from drawing lessons from his case studies for technical, educational, regula-tory and political intervention. Social Media and the Post-Truth World Order is a welcome contribution to a growing body of theory and empirical analysis in post-truth studies.