Trump and circumstance: introducing the post-truth claim as an instrument for investigating truth contestation in public discourse

ABSTRACT

The idea of post-factual politics has become increasingly relevant for describing current political and societal developments. Though research on the topic has been blooming, we lack a common framework and systematic tool to map and analyze post-truth communication. Therefore, our paper advances the adaptation of claims-making for the analysis of how actors relativize the truth and use discourses of untruthfulness to attack their opponents, constructing their own versions of reality. We extend the affinity between populism and post-truth to conceptualize truth contestation in two aspects: (1) the antagonistic anti-elite constructions of accusations of creating and spreading false information and lies, (2) the emphasis on emotionality and negativity over facts and expertise. Building on a communication-centered approach to populism, we define key content and stylistic characteristics of post-truth claims to study the contestation of truth in political communication in a systematic way. Taking the Twitter communication of Donald Trump as a prime example, we illustrate the employability of our approach via a pilot study on the longest period of shutdown in US history (22 December 2018–25 January 2019). As a result, we introduce claims analysis as an approach that can be usefully adapted to study post-truth discourses.

KEYWORDS:

• claims analysis
• populist communication
• post-factual
• post-truth
• Trump
• Twitter

Acknowledgments

The work on this article by Alena Kluknavská was supported by the Czech Science Foundation [Project “Contestation of Truth: Public Discourses on Migration in Central Europe in the Post-truth Era”, grant number 19-14575Y]. The work by Olga Eisele was supported by the FWF Austrian Science Fund [Project “Tango on a Tightrope”, grant number T-989]. We would like to thank Jan Hanzelka for his support and feedback. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by FWF Austrian Science Fund: [Grant Number T-989]; Czech Science Foundation: [Grant Number 19-14575Y].

Notes on contributors

Alena Kluknavská

Alena Kluknavská is a post-doctoral researcher at Masaryk University (Czech Republic). Her research focuses on political communication and mediated public and political discourses on migration and minority issues. She is also interested in understanding the communication strategie and successes of the populist radical right parties and movements in Central and Eastern Europe. She obtained her PhD from Comenius University in Bratislava in 2015.

Olga Eisele

Olga Eisele is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Vienna. Her research deals with political crisis communication by political executives and the media, with a special focus on the European Union. She’s also interested in advances in content analysis. She obtained her PhD from the University of Vienna in 2017.