Image credit: Columbia Journalism Review, https://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-study.php

***

Epistemology: the study of knowledge; the study of how we know what we know

Changes to American epistemology over the past 30 years is the primary factor in our contemporary political dysfunction and cultural division. Specifically, the way Americans come to know what they know has gotten faster, more individualized, and systemically directed in a way that was not possible until the advent of cable news and the internet. Understanding how people decide what to believe and why they justify their beliefs in certain ways is crucial to understanding the depth and danger of current American political and cultural divisions.

One epistemological theory is coherentism. This theory holds that knowledge is justified through a series of interlocking beliefs. These beliefs are justified by still other beliefs that, taken all together, construct a coherent set of beliefs. You can think of a set of coherent beliefs as a swarm in which each belief supports and is supported by all the other beliefs in the swarm. The primary flaw with coherentism is the possibility that there could exist multiple coherent sets of beliefs, different sets of beliefs which separately purport to be true yet contradict each other.

Coherentism, whatever its flaws may be, is a primary way in which people determine what they believe to be true. Countless studies have concluded that when presented with information that goes against their beliefs, people are more likely to discount the information than to change their beliefs. Psychologists call this “confirmation bias.”

***

Lamenting over division sown through “social media bubbles” was all the rage following the 2016 election. Social media bubbles are a direct result of coherentism on an individual level and, ominously, a systemic level. In its effort to keep people scrolling and engaged on its platform, Facebook created algorithms to show users more of the things they already liked, whether it be puppy videos or partisan news.

Social media and the internet have made it possible for each of us to exist in our own individualized epistemic bubble. Even when talking to close friends (with very similar political views) about current events, I am shocked at how each person has their own particular news sources and how little overlap there is.

Coherentism, through social media bubbles and partisan cable news, leads to widespread partisan epistemologies, in which information from your “side” is accepted uncritically while information from the “other side” is disregarded due to its source. Your individualized epistemology is likely nestled inside a larger partisan epistemology like Russian dolls. This is why hyper-partisanship is so destructive and divisive: How can you have a productive conversation about politics with someone who has a different and contradictory set of constructed beliefs? How do you compromise when you each have different beliefs about what is a fact?

Partisan epistemologies, constructed through self-selection and attention-grabbing algorithms, are unhelpful to fostering national unity. This is a sea change from the mid 20th century when there were just three television news organizations. However, the creation of partisan epistemologies are not necessarily the product of malevolent actors. Politicians may use rhetoric to fire up their supporters but in general try to appeal to a broad audience; they must if they want 51% of the vote. Similarly, I don’t think it was Facebook’s intent to divide people leading up to the 2016 election. Facebook’s intent is to keep people scrolling and keep the ad revenue flowing. Malevolent actors, though, and Russia in particular, have taken advantage of our existing partisan epistemologies to further divide us.

Conspiracy theory websites like InfoWars take the dangers of practical coherentism to a new level with “corrupted epistemologies.” (Credit to Kate Starbird for coining this term. This whole paragraph references her fantastic research into alternative media.) Among other insights, Starbird found a link between Russian disinformation efforts (RT and Sputnik) and the web of “alternative” news websites (InfoWars, VeteransToday, Newsbusters). These websites spin a web of lies about school shootings, foreign military affairs, and more which constructs a set of beliefs in direct contradiction to the set of beliefs constructed through real news organizations (Wall Street Journal, NYT, Washington Post, CNN). These “alternative” news websites poison our already partisan epistemologies, flooding us with disinformation and propaganda, making it difficult for many people to determine what is and is not true.

Some people may find it easier to simply give up on trying to figure out the truth and tune out all news media. In turn, this makes it even harder for positive political change to happen – how can you support something when you aren’t sure what information is real? After all, it’s much easier to get comfortable in your epistemological bubble than deal with contradictory information.