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- Post-fake artivism: how activism and art can break reflexivityPublication . Veiga, Pedro AlvesThis text explores the historical evolution and intertwinement of propaganda, black-boxing, and attention control over the last century, and their combined roles in influencing the masses, more specifically through the spread of fake information in various media formats. In this scenario, artivism (art + activism), in its many forms, hacks the black boxes and exposes their inner workings, algorithms, and strategies. Thus, the author highlights key aspects of propaganda, as posited during the Second World War, and their subsequent spread into advertising, becoming an intrinsic part of global politics and businesses. The concept of black-boxing, as introduced by Latour to designate an opaque process that takes input A and transforms it into output B, while hiding its inner workings or hidden purposes, is then extended and applied to all modern content and media production – including propaganda and advertising – that occludes its sources and information transformation from the public. The reflexive use of these extended back-boxes, together with technological determinism, is fostering what is presented as a widespread phenomenon, turning fake into real, largely supported by a culture rooted in propaganda, thriving in attention-capturing mechanisms and in the conscious use of logical fallacies to maximize public impact, epitomized by the phrase “if faking it gets the job done, who cares?” Form has become more important than function, in the pursuit of goals. The appeal to emotion – overriding reason and fact – is privileged in public communication. Recent advances in generative AI black-boxed systems have densified the scenario, making it nearly impossible to distinguish between highly polished, often hyper-realistic, machine-generated deep-fakes and actual, human-generated media. In a post-fake reality punctuated by a barrage of cognitively overlaid buzzwords – from the simpler like, friend, or tag to the more complex Internet of behaviors, artificial intelligence, extended reality, or enhanced connectivity – created and controlled by dominant cultures to inculcate habits and norms, and to consolidate power, the dismantlement of this unprecedented curtain of clichés becomes urgent, and post-fake artivism (art+activism) may be a step in the right direction.