243 Mediatization, post-truth, and knowledge production about Covid-19 Igor Sacramento1 Abstract: This article discusses some of the arguments mobi- lized by Jair Bolsonaro in defense of the use of hydroxychloro- quine for the treatment of COVID-19 in Brazil. To this end, we analyzed 32 posts published on the president’s official Facebook page, between February 26 and July 25, 2020. The Brazilian president, legitimized by the contemporary epistemological regime marked by testimonial ethos and post-truth political prac- tice, overvalues experiential truth as a way of denying the exper- imental truth produced by scientific studies that have shown the ineffectiveness and lack of safety offered by the drug to people infected with the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). Keywords: Testimony. Truth. Health. Hydroxychloroquine. Bolsonaro. For some time now, the expression “post-truth” has been used as a concept. Word of the Year in 2016, according to the Oxford Dictionary, it referred to the political atmosphere that led to Trump’s election and Brexit, and the massive spread of fake news. “Post-truth” encompasses at least three distinct yet linked phenomena: the consequences of network communica- tion on contemporary public life, the liberation of a new type of political and public discourse founded on the contempt for facts and consensual scientific knowledge, and the execution of diag- noses and prescriptions proclaiming the end of truth and the 1 Professor at the Graduate Program in Informação e Comunicação em Saúde (Fiocruz) and at the Graduate Program in Comunicação e Cultura (UFRJ). OR- CID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1509-4778. LATTES: http://lattes.cnpq. br/1758813567228605. E-MAIL: igorsacramento@gmail.com.
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