This article draws on Elias’s sociology of knowledge to delineate the social processes that have culminated in the development of the post-truth phenomenon. It argues that technological and social changes have led to a complex commingling of increased emotion and increasingly ‘rational’ debating techniques. These have been accompanied by an increasing human capacity to consider issues on multiple ‘levels’ and anticipate the varied ways in which different audiences could perceive particular propositions. While these changes explain the polarisation of views characteristic of post-truth, the theory of informalisation is invoked to explain the relative absence of shame at the public exposure of ‘untruths’. The article expands debates in communication and science and technology studies to locate post-truth as an emergent form of knowledge contingent upon new forms of communication, a re-structuring of social interdependencies and changes in modes of thinking. In so doing, it advances the sociological analysis of knowledge.

本文利用埃里亚斯的知识社会学来描述导致后真理现象发展的社会过程。它认为，技术和社会变革已导致情绪增加和辩论方法日益“理性化”的复杂混合。这些伴随着人们越来越多的能力来考虑多个“层次”上的问题，并预见到不同的听众可以以何种方式理解特定的主张。尽管这些变化解释了后真理的观点的两极分化，但非正规化的理论却被用来解释公众对“不道德”的暴露相对没有羞耻感。这篇文章扩大了交流和科学技术研究的争论，以定位后真理是新形式的交流，社​​会相互依存的重构和思维方式的变化所依赖的一种新兴的知识形式。这样做可以促进知识的社会学分析。