Mis)communication in the Age of (Mis)information

As the philosopher Jason Stanley notes, "A puzzle arises in our current moment: in a time in which there is more information available than ever before, there also seems to be an upsurge in willful ignorance." Some have connected this paradox to the polarization of American politics, which has been exploited by different parties and causes for political gain. From the Trump administration's deployment of "alternative facts" and "fake news" to the vaccine-skeptic calls to "do your own research," the critique of universalist claims has often been marshaled for intolerant, reactionary, and even deadly ends. By examining digital hoarding as both an aesthetic and epistemological problem, my article proposes that Stanley's paradox also has roots in the contemporary crisis of storing, organizing, and navigating information. Any shared or common sense has been replaced by a private hoard of information curated for and legible only to a coterie of followers—a development that has become weaponized by politics and resulted in the propagation of echo chambers, epistemic bubbles, and conspiracy theories. I conclude by trying to imagine the possibilities of shared communication in this age of (mis)information. Might it be possible to find some common ground without the hegemonic aspirations of the Enlightenment

Aesthetics · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Hegemony · Ignorance · Information Age · Orthodoxy · Political science · Politics · Reactionary · Skepticism · Sociology · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Philosophy