Postmodern çağda gerçeğin kontrolü

Today, developments in information and communication technologies have made it easier to communicate and access information than any technology has done in the past. Today, through smart mobile phones and tablet or laptop computers that provide internet access, human beings can access the content they want at any time and communicate instantly with people on the other side of the world. This situation has enabled the public, which previously existed as a passive audience in the face of the media, to take part as an "active" audience. At this point, it has opened the door to many new debates about the media's role, power, and discourse. Considering that this new social structure brings about many negative situations, such as the violation of the surveillance, privacy, and freedoms of individuals, it can be said that new technologies make it equally easier to access all kinds of information, especially confidential information about people through social media channels, as well as the conveniences they add to the field of communication and information. Therefore, the media and ethics debate, which previously only targeted the governments, has been an issue for everyone connecting to social networks today. However, the inflation experienced in both news production and news circulation has led to the concern of verifying the contents in the new media, and this concern has led to the establishment of many news and information "verification" sites. Although the concept of "verification", which entered the literature as "factchecking," was actually developed within by the political campaigning process, today, many national and international newspapers have created "news, content, information verification" channels, which they call "fact-checkers." Fact-checking sites are emerging as a new media discourse where false or fake news and claims are debunked. However, the question of which "facts" are "fact-checked," which "untrue" or "fake" news are selected and refuted, and to what extent they affect the opinion of the public remains hot. The concept of fact-checking is parallel to the emergence of the concept of post-truth. With its current meaning and use, the concept of post-truth should be considered as a political projection of the concept of fact-checking in the media. The concept of post-truth was used for the socio-political environment that brought Donald Trump, elected President of the United States in the 2016 elections, to power. It was because although the American mainstream media portrayed Trump as a "mind-blowing" profile, his election as the president pushed both the media and political scientists to seek a reality "beyond the truth." Inspired by Baudrillard's work (2011, p. 56), which goes beyond McLuhan's motto of "the medium is the message" and emphasizes that medium is a simulacrum that tries to change reality by settling into it like a chronic disease, it can be said that the concepts of fact-checking and post-truth are also our "new tellaks." 1 In this thesis, we will focus on the "fact" in the concept of fact-checking and look for an answer to the question of "which fact." Although the concept of fact-checking rises as a journalistic term, both its emergence and its claim make it necessary to address it both epistemologically, philosophically, and politically. For this reason, in this thesis, the concept of fact-checking will be examined within the framework of postmodern thought and praxis. Although undoubtedly the breadth of this framework exceeds the limits of this thesis, we aim to present a perspective in this direction in the study. Keywords: Agenda-Setting, disinformation, discourse, fact-checking, gatekeeping, post-truth, postmodernity