The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all countries at different levels, but mostly negatively, in areas such as in realms social, political, and economic, as well as in terms of health and security. While the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in different dimensions remain among the most popularly discussed topics of the recent period, this study focuses on the effects of the pandemic on politics, media, and the post-truth society. In the first part, it attempts to determine whether there is a parallelism between the methods of governments and politicians in different countries in the fight against the pandemic, and their levels of development and democratization through examples. The uncertainties experienced in the period of the pandemic, in which all countries were caught unprepared, the withdrawal from normalcy, and the problems experienced in the economies were followed by a rapid recovery process, especially with the discovery of the vaccine.
While this recovery was experienced more rapidly and effectively in democratic countries, a different picture emerged in countries with weaker democratic traditions, higher authoritarian tendencies, and under the rule of populist leaders. In this context, the performances of democratic, populist, and authoritarian governments are evaluated comparatively. In the second part, in addition to the impact of the pandemic on the media sector, the social effects of individuals’ news consumption habits in the so-called “post-truth” era will be discussed. As a matter of fact, the negative effect of fake/false news during the pandemic has shown its negative effects in different areas, especially in terms of social well-being. This situation has been defined as an “infodemic” by the World Health Organization and has been considered to be at least as dangerous as the pandemic itself. In such a period when a belief in science and scientists are most needed, the reactions were given to the news about COVID-19 at the level of individuals, the extent to which the fake/false news can be noticed, and the role of all these changes in the continuation of the post-truth society will be discussed within the scope of the study.
