Post-Truth Politics Implementation in the Context of National Referendums

The term post-truth (also known as post-truth politics, post-truth rhetoric and era of post-truth) has recently surfaced in the modern political discourse. Despite the fact that the term is often sued to describe the state of modern political discourse in western democracies, the phenomenon of post-truth still does not have solid defining characteristics. The phenomenon of post-truth despite its popularity remains insufficiently studied. In this study we attempt to underline the key characteristics of post-truth. We also conduct an analysis of 2 referendums – Brexit and the Scottish independence referendum of 2014. The goals of this study are: • To study the term “post-truth” • To create a list of characteristics of post-truth through analyzing appropriate scientific literature • To reveal possible reasons of transition of discourse into the post-truth era • To conduct a content-analysis of different referendum campaign materials in order to highlight the presence of characteristics of post-truth • To potentially highlight the vector of further research into the phenomenon The main hypothesis of this study is: • H1 – key characteristics of post-truth realize themselves in referendum campaigns In the first chapter, a brief overview of characteristics of post-truth is given. In the second chapter, we take a look into possible reasons of the shift into post-truth politics (based on appropriate western research). Chapter 3 is a brief overview of referendums in general as well as in the context of Britain and Scotland. Also, the third chapter a brief observation of possible connection between populism, democracy and referendums is made. In the fourth chapter the research part of the study is described^ a description of the analyzed referendum campaign, methodology used and the results.