UCL IAS Lies: Fake News and the Politics of Social Media

Responsibility and Fake News in the Time of Social Media by Maria Paola Ferretti

Many commentators argue that social media make it increasingly difficult for recipients of news to discharge their epistemic obligation (which I call ‘alethic obligation’); that is, to critically discern among genuine and fake news and identify reliable sources of information. This seems to support the view that criteria for assigning epistemic responsibility of social media users should be relaxed. The aspiration to truth, which generally should guide our attitude to news that we receive, thus becomes less important. As trustworthy epistemic authorities are hard to find, only our preferences and emotions should count in deciding what to believe. In my presentation I challenge this idea and argue that whenever people post something, re-tweet or share a message, they have responsibility both as recipient and as a source of information. Social networks give people greater communicative powers that entail greater (rather than discounted) epistemic responsibilities.

Stop talking about Fake News! by Joshua Habgood-Coote

We’re in trouble, epistemically speaking. Our social media feeds are full of misinformation, disinformation, deep fakes, and fake news; we’ve entered a new post-truth era. I want to raise some concerns about the terminology used in the last two sentences, in particular about the phrases ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’. Although repeated use has habituated us to these terms, I suggest that they are linguistically defective, unnecessary, and vehicles for bad propaganda. We should stop talking about ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’. I’ll try to make some suggestions about how to frame a more productive discussion about the epistemic health of democratic societies.

Bios

Maria Paola Ferretti is senior research fellow in Political Theory at the Goethe University of Frankfurt on Main. Her main research interests are in the field of public ethics. She is currently working on a manuscript on political corruption, and on a project on the regulation of risk. Her recent book is “The Public Perspective. Public Justification and the Ethics of Belief” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018).

Joshua Habgood-Coote is a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Bristol, working in the Department of Philosophy. He is working on a project about group inquiry, looking at building a framework for understanding what’s involved in a group of people answering a question together, as well as thinking about the importance of this process for science and democracy. 

All welcome. Please note that there may be photography and/or audio recording at some events and that admission is on a first come first served basis. Please follow this FAQ link for more information.