, political commentators have identified post-truth politics as ascendant in many nations, notably Australia, Brazil, China, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, among others. As with other areas of debate, this is being driven by a combination of the 24-hour news cycle, false balance in news reporting, and the increasing ubiquity of social media and fake news websites. In 2016, "post-truth" was chosen as the Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year due to its prevalence in the context of that year's Brexit referendum and media coverage of the US presidential election.