Reputation, trust education and democracy

I wrote the following article for the New Straits Times. It was published on September 12, 2018, page 56. The issue discussed centered on reputation trust and democracy. I drew upon the writing of Gloria Origgi in the discussion.

Reputation, trust education and democracy

'Our ability as citizens to arrive at reasonable understandings of complex scientific, social and technical information has political implications for the idea of a properly informed citizenship as a basis for democracy. In the online environment with its overabundance of information, points of view and polarized spin it seems harder and harder for us to accurately judge the veracity and reliability of what we hear and even see and make informed judgements on many complex issues. We are incessantly told to beware ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ and for many people all this amounts to is a sense of increasing distrust of traditional sources of information.

The problem of being able to figure out what to believe is increasingly viewed as a problem of who to believe.  The problem of what some critics refer to as a ‘post-truth’ environment is a serious pedagogical and political problem which goes to the heart of our capacity for democratic rule.

John Dewey who famously wrote ‘Democracy and Education’ recognized and espoused the educational dimension to democracy and the importance of democracy to educational ideas.[1] How can a democracy function when we cannot agree on the veracity and accuracy of information regarding central and critically important scientific, social and political issues? One approach to this issue comes from Gloria Origgi who is a senior researcher at CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research) in Paris. Writing for Aeon digital magazine Origgi makes the argument that:

‘We are experiencing a fundamental paradigm shift in our relationship to knowledge. From the ‘information age’, we are moving towards the ‘reputation age’, in which information will have value only if it is already filtered, evaluated and commented upon by others. Seen in this light, reputation has become a central pillar of collective intelligence today. It is the gatekeeper to knowledge, and the keys to the gate are held by others. The way in which the authority of knowledge is now constructed makes us reliant on what are the inevitably biased judgments of other people, most of whom we do not know.’[2]

According to Origgi: ‘the vastly increased access to information and knowledge we have today does not empower us or make us more cognitively autonomous. Rather, it renders us more dependent on other people’s judgments and evaluations of the information with which we are faced.’[3] In other words the more information we have makes us more not less reliant on other people’s judgments. Most of us are simply in no real position to judge the veracity of much of the information we have. Ask yourself the following question. Given our limits of time and energy do we all really have the ability or inclination to sieve through all the facts, evaluate all the issues and judge the veracity of all the key problems where citizens are meant to exercise some effective opinion?

Of course, if we were competent to be able to make judgements as to the veracity or truthfulness of all the news and other forms of information then this is commendable but for most of the time for reasons to do with information overload, lack of expertise and our inability to pay attention to everything all the time we need to be able to know who or what to trust in providing the best assessments, views, summations and insights into critical issues. According to Origgi:

‘What a mature citizen of the digital age should be competent at is not spotting and confirming the veracity of the news. Rather, she should be competent at reconstructing the reputational path of the piece of information in question, evaluating the intentions of those who circulated it, and figuring out the agendas of those authorities that leant it credibility.’[4]

Origgi points out:

‘Whenever we are at the point of accepting or rejecting new information, we should ask ourselves: Where does it come from? Does the source have a good reputation? Who are the authorities who believe it? What are my reasons for deferring to these authorities? Such questions will help us to get a better grip on reality than trying to check directly the reliability of the information at issue. In a hyper-specialised system of the production of knowledge, it makes no sense to try to investigate on our own, for example, the possible correlation between vaccines and autism. It would be a waste of time, and probably our conclusions would not be accurate. In the reputation age, our critical appraisals should be directed not at the content of information but rather at the social network of relations that has shaped that content and given it a certain deserved or undeserved ‘rank’ in our system of knowledge.’[5]

Reestablishing trust in the proper authorities on subjects and knowing who and what to trust is a key ingredient in how we as citizens can arrive at reasonable understandings of issues which can then inform our judgements. If we cannot do this we increase the risk that we will be manipulated and deceived by vested interests using forms of media exploitation and the seductions of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’. Origgi’s conclusion brings us back to Dewey’s espousal of the importance of learning and education to democracy. Origgi writes:

‘A civilised cyber-world will be one where people know how to assess critically the reputation of information sources, and can empower their knowledge by learning how to gauge appropriately the social ‘rank’ of each bit of information that enters their cognitive field.’[6]

If in this information age where citizens become confused and unsteady in the face of fake news, alternative facts, so-called diverse truths and algorithmically manipulated information then the very foundations of democracy are threatened. It seems that Dewey would not be surprised by the conclusion that addressing these threats to democracy entails learning and this points again to the crucial role of education. The development of our critical capacities to understand and evaluate the social relations, networks and sources of information is crucial for rebuilding our trust in the information and facts we receive. When we talk of higher education perhaps we ought to consider this in our assessment of its mission and contribution to a democratic society.'

References

[1] John Dewey, Democracy and Education : An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, Macmillan Paperbacks ; 38. (New York: Macmillan, 1961).

[2] Gloria Origgi, "Say Goodbye to the Information Age: It’s All About Reputation Now," Aeon (2018).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.