Many new terms have appeared on the popular radar over the past year or so, some of which you might need to look up (sharenting, or bruiting for example). Others, like Brexit, you’ll be all too familiar with.

However, the word which stole the Oxford dictionary’s top spot in 2016 was Post-truth. This is no coincidence, and should leave us all quite queasy. This particular post-ism reveals a growing feeling that what is true is no longer so significant; it is already taking hold in profound ways.

One of the main reasons why the Leave campaign won the EU referendum last June, albeit by a slight margin, was its relaxation of the truth. Some shrewdly realised that this was a battle to be fought not in the public’s minds but in their hearts where truth has less sway.

Flanked by a jubilant tabloid press which has for years professed a questionable commitment to facts, the Leave campaign set about rubbishing Remain’s boring old collation of stats and figures. They even sent in Michael Gove, the straightest face they had, to tell everyone they had “had enough of experts.”

On that victorious morning of 24 June even those perpetrators seemed startled when asked to explain why the pockets of the NHS wouldn’t exactly be bursting with that mythical £350 million extra per week as pledged in big-red-bus form.

Campaigns and presidents can lie; isn’t ‘post-truth’ a fancy term for something as old as time?

Meanwhile, a certain American wheeler dealer with tangerine hair (and skin) was licking his lips at confirmation that truth wasn’t a necessary ingredient to successful political campaigning. Donald Trump’s disregard for facts has been supersize. It’s challenging to pick out the best examples; we are spoilt for choice.

During the campaign for the US presidency, he made a habit of fabricating outlandish stories about his opponent, Hillary Clinton: Clinton wants open borders; she believes abortion is OK until the day before birth; she’s raising everyone’s taxes, massively, etc.

He has repeatedly (and wrongly) claimed he won the popular vote as well as the Electoral College vote. This was extended to the petty issue of crowd numbers at his inauguration, which appeared sparse to the average naked eye. He saw something quite different: the “largest audience to witness an inauguration, period.” His most recent outburst has been unsupported accusations that he was the subject of wiretapping ordered directly by his predecessor President Obama.

So what?

Campaigns and presidents can lie; isn’t ‘post-truth’ a fancy term for something as old as time? The problem is the scale of the lies and the forums through which they are shared.

At last month’s Belfast Imagine Festival, Bill Adair, founder of the Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact, asked “Are we living in a post-truth democracy?”

He elaborated on the double-edged sword of the digital age. On one hand, having vast amounts of information at our fingertips is empowering and strengthens democracy. On the other hand, much of that information is incorrect but spreads uninhibitedly through social media and reaches thousands, at times millions of people.

Social media has become our main interface with the Internet; that in itself presents a subsequent problem. We tend to interact with like-minded people; although the information we come across may be true but it is unlikely to be diverse or to challenge our opinions: the famed echo chamber.

So, is our post-truth fate sealed?

The world outside might often feel like a prolonged episode of the Twilight Zone, but now is not the time to resign ourselves to a post-truth existence. There is reason to hope, because while fake news has been on the rise so too has fact-checking.

PolitiFact has been part of a global movement that has inspired FactCheckNI, among other dedicated fact-checkers, that encourages readers to test their news sources by giving them a platform where they can double-check statements made by politicians or the media for accuracy.

The movement faces a mammoth task, but it signals a new kind of energy and commitment to defending the truth.

It is showing signs of success. Politicians are beginning to talk about being ‘politifacted’, and hence take more extra care in what they say.

Surely this can only be a good thing. It reminds us that if we are to avoid a post-truth world the onus is on us. Our leaders can always be held accountable; it just takes a new kind of effort.

*Link to FactCheckNI: http://www.factcheckni.org/