Post-truth, fake news and other drugs

living in times of toxic information

Abstract

The advent of the network society has promoted significant changes in the experience-with-the-world. In recent years, the growing toxicity in the information environment has been observed, marked both by the toxic experience of information that circulates legally on social networks and by information that intoxicates individuals and groups. The objective is to discuss, in times of post-truth and non-stop society, the toxic aspect of information, which by making the information environment toxic, sickens individuals and democratic societies, by weakening empathy for others and jeopardize the very idea of democracy and shared life in a democratic way. The proposal is to discuss intoxication by information not by excess, but by what I mean “toxic information”, the toxic aspect of the information and the toxic informational environment based on Hate Speech. To this end, the deconstruction of experiences of democratic states will be considered by increasing the circulation of hate speech and fascist hate speech; the growth of disinformation; the increase in the circulation of fraudulent news (Fake news) and false news (for example, those not endorsed by scientific knowledge, such as terraplanism, the idea of white supremacy); robots and algorithms.