Abstract
Journalism and media studies lack robust theoretical concepts for studying journalistic knowledge generation. More specifically, conceptual challenges attend the emergence of big data and algorithmic sources of journalistic knowledge. A family of frameworks apt to this challenge is provided by “social epistemology”: a young philosophical field which regards society’s participation in knowledge generation as inevitable. Social epistemology offers the best of both worlds for journalists and media scholars: a thorough familiarity with biases and failures of obtaining knowledge, and a strong orientation toward best practices in the realm of knowledge-acquisition and truth-seeking. This article articulates the lessons of social epistemology for two central nodes of knowledge-acquisition in contemporary journalism: human-mediated knowledge and technology-mediated knowledge.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 213-229 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | New Media and Society |
Volume | 22 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Feb 2020 |
Keywords
- Echo chambers
- epistemology
- evidence
- fact-checking algorithms
- journalism
- knowledge
- news practices
- testimony
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication
- Sociology and Political Science