This expression is most often used in the context of alternative or fabricated facts, fake news, affect- rather than fact-based opinions, echo chambers (situations in which beliefs are reinforced by repetition inside a closed system, such as on various social media), filter bubbles (bubbles of intellectual isolation created by personalised search algorithms), and a crisis of experts.

Post-truth is also the phenomenon that occurs in accelerated (digital) forms of communication where vast quantities of sometimes conflicting messages circulate simultaneously, and in digital decisionism where a faster decision is more valuable than a correct one.