Mediatized Sapiens: Communicational knowledge

Mediatization, post-truth, and knowledge production about Covid-19 265 speaking the truth to power (as in the countless social movements from the 20th century that used testimony as a strategy of resis- tance, denunciation, and struggle for reparation, as a counterdiscourse and a quest to interdict the repetition or continuity of structural, state, or institutional violence) than a way of speaking the truth of power, consolidating and reproducing it. In the specific case analyzed by the article, it is about articulating the Brazilian president’s personal experiences in defense of the use of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19: the testi- mony, here, appears as a way of resisting and denying science, establishing the worldview of a political group as the truth to be followed.The denial of the scientific procedure through the su- perposition of experience and testimony to methodological mediation is not something exclusive to the discursive economy of Bolsonarism. Public discourse on controversial scientific issues seems to be deepening more and more into a position where the veracity of claims matters less than the possibility of agreeing with them. If there is no objective truth, then no one can speak the truth to power; in this case, the search for truth has been replaced by belief in certain opinions as absolute truth. We are in an era where the concept of truth is used in ways that no longer align with what truth has traditionally meant. If objective truth is no longer something we strive to achieve, and if we know that all sides of the political spectrum are engaged in producing their own truth, then it makes perfect sense to align ourselves with the truth that we find most receptive to a particular system of values and beliefs. In other words, if trust levels in institutions have declined to the point where it is now assumed that everyone is lying (although it is not observed that if there is no truth, then there are no lies), then to accept the narrative that best fits with someone’s worldview seems to make perfect sense. We still cannot fully understand how much the en- counter of the extreme right with ultraliberalism in Brazil takes what we understand here as scientific denialism to be seen by those who live such a belief system as freedom of expression, personal opinion, and experience. There is a contemporary cultural disposition for the mediatized vocalization of reports, especially in the form of testimony. One of the foundations of

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