Post truth and political communication discourse analysis on the 2020 US Presidential Elections

The concept of post-truth emerges as a constantly growing concept as of the current year. One of the biggest reasons for the emergence of the concept of post-truth is the changing set of values in the media and politics. Post-truth rose with Donad Trump during the US presidential election process in 2016. It is not possible to say that this rise happened all at once. The concepts of real and truth showed blending tendencies with other concepts on different grounds, then merged with media and politics relations and the concept of post-truth emerged. In this context, first of all, the origins of the concept of post-truth and the concepts it is related to are mentioned. Although the concept of post-truth creates false news, it is seen that the media and news sources are questioned in this period when the facts of truth, reality and trust are reshaped. Important situations such as media functions, duties and structures in connection with news sources are examined under the microscope. It is observed that the phenomenon of objectivity and impartiality in the news is on the verge of disappearing day by day. It is seen that especially news sources adopt an ideology and share the events with the public by filtering them in this context. In the light of post-truth, media and politics, the research is formed in four main sections. In the first part; origins and rise of the concept of post-truth, in the second part; the concept of media, in the third part; politics and its sub-titles are examined. Finally, in the fourth section, the headline and spot sections of the news about ten events shared by three news sources determined during the 2020 US presidential election process are analyzed by discourse analysis method for the analysis of the research. The research reveals that news sources share the events with the public from an ideological point of view, without distorting them. Keywords: Post-truth, truth, reality, lie, media, news, politics, political communication, ideology