CFP: The Epistemology of the Media: New Directions

We are pleased to announce the first Applied Epistemology Project workshop, on the topic "The Epistemology of the Media: New Directions," and to invite applications to serve as a respondent at the workshop. The workshop will be held on September 9-10 at UNC Chapel Hill, and will feature talks by Yuval Avnur (Philosophy, Scripps College), Jianing Li (Communication, University of South Florida), Alice Marwick (Communication, UNC), Shannon McGregor (Journalism, UNC), Regina Rini (Philosophy, York University), and Susanna Siegel (Philosophy, Harvard).

Those interested in serving as a respondent should email a short CV to [email protected] by Monday, July 25th. Please also indicate if you have a preference as to which speaker(s) you would most like to respond to. All respondents will have their workshop meals covered. Respondents who are graduate students or untenured scholars and who do not have access to personal research funds will also be eligible to have accommodation and travel expenses covered; please indicate with your application if you meet these criteria.

A full description of the workshop topic follows below:

One feature of the recent applied turn in epistemology has been a sudden burst of philosophical work on "fake news." But beyond this, the epistemology of the media remains relatively underexplored within philosophy. This workshop will aim to bring together scholars both from philosophy and from fields such as communications and journalism to identify and explore new questions and problems in this important area, at a time of unique challenges for news production and consumption caused by new media technologies. We also aim to better understand how philosophy can help to inform social scientific work in this area, and vice versa. Topics for exploration might include, but are by no means limited to: 

• How should we understand the epistemology of testimony in the context of media and social media?
• Does contemporary media coverage produce too much doubt and skepticism or too little? 
• How should media outlets cover issues about which there is very widespread public disagreement?
• What are the responsibilities of news consumers in deciding which media sources to consume (if any at all)?
• What role should ideals of truth, knowledge and rationality play in a vision of contemporary journalism?