ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to examine the dual threat to societies from the interplay between the post-Truth era’s “infodemic” and the Covid-19 pandemic. The chapter argues that the convergence of two virulent phenomena poses a double risk to societies in terms of PV destruction, since they confront both a challenge of disseminating appropriate information to the public, while also preventing the biological threat posed to the public by the virus. After reviewing the literature of post-Truth public value and the infodemic, the chapter deploys a case study of Brazil and its Bolsonarist government to argue that public value destruction is categorically worse in a pandemic–infodemic nexus. The chapter introduces a new PV tool of the “triangle of disvalue” to contextualize how PV’s agents drive the processes of disvalue, and yet face resistance from equivalent agents who seek to preserve public value and deter or delay the processes of PV destruction. This tool, the chapter argues, can inform PV treatments of disvalue and destruction in future research.
