Post-Truth Media and Its Impact on Consumer Behavior: An Exploratory Study on “Young Adults”

Abstract

In the new system created by the Web 2.0 revolution of Internet and digital Technologies and enabling content creation, the second generation of services offered by jointly sharing has laid the ground for its formation of communication networks that directly affect consumer behavior and grouping on social media in countries with high rate of social media usage such as Turkey. In the new communication environment, the concept of Post-Truth, which has become popular as a result of the fact that public judgements affected by emotions and personal convictions away from rationality and has been choosen as the Word of 2016 by Oxford Dictionaries, has become a factor that affects consumer behavior and difficult to control in daily life. In this study, focus group interviews was conducted to determine the effect of Post-Truth media on consumption behaviors of the “Young Adults” segment which was determined as the 18-34 age range, and the effect of Post-Truth concept and Post-Truth media on consumer behavior was emphasized. Research findings point out that; consumers do not respect the Post-Truth news about the brands they are loyal to and that they interpret the same situation and news in different ways depending on whether or not the news source is compatible with their own political views, businesses should not prefer the social media channels and activities associated with a particular political view in order not to be affected by the Post-Truth media because of the fact that Post-Truth news is generally perceived as political-based.