Dave Whitsett Next Week in COPS

Next week Political Science Ph.D. student Dave Whitsett will present in COPS, and he's looking for potential collaborators. Here's a description of the ideas he'll present:

Political science and communication scholars in recent decades have been preoccupied with an array of issues related to what might be called the “epistemic well-being of democracy.” Worries about democracy’s epistemic well-being motivate research warning, for example, of the increased potential for cognitive biases to influence people’s worldviews in a high-choice informational environment, the possibility that citizens might intentionally or unintentionally use technology to sequester themselves into “echo chambers” that do not expose them to challenges to their beliefs, and the ability for misinformation to spread through new communications media with unprecedented ease and quickness due to reduced barriers to entry. Of late, the picture painted by commentators has tended to be highly pessimistic, with numerous scholars and mainstream pundits voicing sentiments similar to those expressed by Anya Schiffrin, who in a recent issue of the Journal of International Affairs claims that “it does not seem an exaggeration to say that disinformation spread by social media has undermined the functioning of democracy globally.” (1)

While I agree with these scholars that the epistemic well-being of democracy is of paramount normative importance and that it is vital to try to understand the ways it is impacted by evolving communications technologies, I also believe sweeping conclusions like Schiffrin’s are premature. This is mainly because the empirical research agenda pursued by scholars looking into the various topics cited above has so far tended to overlook several key issues that need to be addressed before we can make any strong conclusions about whether new communications technologies are undermining democracy and which policy proposals are best suited to help us do better. In my presentation, I’ll highlight the four issues I take to be most important and sketch a couple rough ideas for empirical research I think might go some way to shoring them up. As a theorist by training, I’d love to find a collaborator or two with a stronger background in empirical research/methodology if anyone is interested. Thanks in advance for all of your time!

(1)    Schiffrin, Anya (2017). “Disinformation and Democracy: The Internet Transformed Protest but did not Improve Democracy.” Journal of International Affairs 71:1, 117-125.