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May 7, 2019 01:13 pm PDT

danah boyd explains the connection between the epistemological crisis and the rise of far-right conspiratorial thinking

Back in 2017, I started writing about the "epistemological crisis" ("we're not living through a crisis about what is true, we're living through a crisis about how we know whether something is true. We're not disagreeing about facts, we're disagreeing about epistemology"); danah boyd picked up on that theme later that year, making the connection between "media literacy" education and the crisis ("If were not careful, 'media literacy' and 'critical thinking' will simply be deployed as an assertion of authority over epistemology").

I've been developing the idea since, connecting it to inequality and oligarchy; and so has boyd: her latest shows how the epistemological crisis gives rise to far-right conspiracies through "Agnotology," ("the strategic and purposeful production of ignorance").

But whats most profound is how its being done en masse now. Teenagers arent only radicalized by extreme sites on the web. It now starts with a simple YouTube query. Perhaps youre a college student trying to learn a concept like social justice that youve heard in a classroom. The first result you encounter is from PragerU, a conservative organization that is committed to undoing so-called leftist ideas that are taught at universities. You watch the beautifully produced video, which promotes many of the tenets of media literacy. Ask hard questions. Follow the money. The video offers a biased and slightly conspiratorial take on what social justice is, suggesting that its not real, but instead a manufactured attempt to suppress you. After you watch this, you watch more videos of this kind from people who are professors and other apparent experts.

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Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/ApvtrF2htvQ/production-of-ignorance.html

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