25 Jan 2017 'Post-truth’ is Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year for 2016. (Other recent winners of the annual accolade have included ‘vape’, ‘selfie’ and the ‘face with tears of joy’ emoji, apparently). Elsewhere we have heard ‘fake news’ decried, and a debate about whether you can have ‘facts’ and ‘alternative facts’ or if there can only ever be facts and falsehoods. According to Oxford Dictionaries, post-truth is “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. It is a concept that is said to have been building in salience around the world. It seems many had felt a long-standing mismatch between what the ‘elites’ in politics or business or the media had been saying was good for them, and what they felt themselves. So the concept of the ‘objective fact’ had not been totally clear. There has always been partial news, and because of what psychologists call 'confirmat