Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
How should we share the truth about the environmental crisis? At a moment when even the most basic facts about ecology and the climate face contestation and contempt, environmental advocates are at an impasse. Many have turned to social media in order to shift the tide --but what if their strategy is not only futile, but dangerous?
The Truth about Nature follows environmental actors as they turn to digital media and social networking platforms to save nature. It documents how conservation efforts can be trapped and transformed in the political economy of platforms and the curation of their algorithmic feeds. Developing a novel account of 'post-truth' as an expression of power under platform capitalism, Bram B scher shows how environmental actors attempt to mediate between structural forms of platform power and the contingent histories and contexts of particular environmental issues. Bringing efforts at wildlife protection in Southern Africa into dialogue with a sweeping analysis of truth and power in the twenty-first century, B scher makes the case for a new environmental politics: one that rekindles the slowly reemerging art of speaking truth to power.