The Escalating Dis/Organization of Post-Truth Communication

The proliferation of unsupported, misleading, and deceptive communication in public discourse, often referred to as post-truth communication (PTC), presents a pressing challenge to democratic societies today. While PTC thrives on attacking established organizations such as political parties, academic institutions, traditional news media, and societally engaged corporations, in doing so it also brings forth its own forms of organization of various degrees. However, the organizational dynamics of PTC have received limited attention in organization theory, thus far. We shed new light on these dynamics based on a perspective that considers communication as constitutive of organizational phenomena (CCO). We further advance this perspective by integrating Robert Cooper’s notion of “dis/organization” and Michel Serres’ notion of the “parasite.” We develop a model of escalating dis/organization, highlighting how PTC maintains its own organizational properties by persistent disordering of established organization. More specifically, we show how PTC accomplishes interconnectivity, identity, and actorhood by disordering these same properties in established organization through escalating disruption of decision-making, identity simulation, and authority exploitation. Our contribution to organization theory is twofold. First, we offer an explanation of how PTC attains its organizational existence at the expense of disordering established organization. Second, we develop a model that specifies in detail the dynamics between PTC-driven and established organization as a two-sided form of escalating dis/organization. In addition to this, our study yields practical implications for how established organization can de-escalate PTC by embracing rather than seeking to suppress its foundational disordering properties.