Deadly Truths and Lively Tensions: Saving Nature in the Era of Post-Truth Politics and Platform Capitalism

The post-truth conundrum presents an acute challenge to environmental conservation: how to share environmental facts in an era where the value of truth is questioned like never before? The answer, for many conservationists, is to share the truth about nature more vigorously than ever before, especially through new media platforms. In this presentation I follow them as they they creatively struggle to do so. By developing an understanding of post-truth as an expression of power under platform capitalism, I argue this this strategy is contradictory, even deadly, but harbors lively tensions that deserve unpacking. Doing so not only has important implications for theory, it implores us to reconsider the importance of searching for truth.