Emotional Axiology: How Post-Truth Changes Value Hierarchies
Abstract
The article explores the transformation of social values under the influence of digital capitalism, post-truth, and algorithmic manipulation. The authors analyze how emotions become a key resource in the formation of hierarchies of significance, displacing rationality and objective truth. They reveal the transformation of social orientations under the influence of digital technologies, focusing on the transition from rationality to emotional-narrative models of perception. The main focus is on the relationship between emotions and values in the context of the virtualization of society, the economy of impressions and the crisis of traditional knowledge institutions. Special attention is paid to the evolution of consumer society, where marketing tools were used to exploit human emotions. The authors demonstrate how branding and marketing replace existential practices with symbolic consumption, generating cycles of short-term satisfaction and long-term alienation. The key topic of the article is also the virtualization of society, where online spaces are becoming a new reality replacing physical interactions. The Internet, video games, and social media are shaping the “cyber prosthetics” of social connections, turning virtual goods and experiences into dominant values. The digital age is reinforcing these trends. Social media algorithms, generative neural networks, video games, and echo chambers monetize attention through emotional triggers, forming information bubbles. Within them, “alternative facts” and group narratives replace objective reality, deepening polarization. Post-truth, where emotions prevail over facts, destroys trust in the institutions of knowledge (science, mass media), replacing them with socio-epistemic arenas of knowledge. Based on a socio-philosophical approach, the authors analyze the mechanisms by which post-truth and algorithmic digital platforms reconfigure traditional value hierarchies.
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References
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