Knowledge, Public Communication and “Post-Truth”: What is Left of Truth in a Time of Pandemic?

The pandemic seems to have reversed the relationship between Knowledge and Communication: communication prevails and determines the significance and meaning of events, just as it happened in premodern times. Public knowledge is being eroded. Post-modern scientific knowledge, already unfathomably complex and technical, is both evolving and becoming obsolete at such great speed that it unveils, paradoxically, the vulnerability and relativity of the truth it claims to grasp. Alongside truth-correspondence and truth-coherence, the older truth-significance also makes itself known. Amplified by the resonance chamber of new media and social networks, the latter can emerge as the “post-truth” and “fake-news” that transform Public Communication into Public Relations.