Final APA Practice Agnetology

Agnotology and Epistemological Fragmentation

“Epistemological fragmentation” means the manipulation of the ways in which people form knowledge.

On April 17, 2019, Data & Society Founder and President Danah Boyd, a principal researcher at Microsoft, gave a talk at the Digital Public Library of America conference (DPLAfest).

These are excerpts from the transcript of that talk.

Slowly, and systematically, a virus has spread, using technology to systematically tear at the social fabric of public life. …Ignorance is often assumed to be not-yet-knowledgeable. But what if ignorance is strategically manufactured? What if the tools of knowledge production are perverted to enable ignorance? In 1995, researchers Robert Proctor and Iain Boal coined the term “agnotology” to describe the strategic and purposeful production of ignorance. Whether we’re talking about the erasure of history or the undoing of scientific knowledge, agnotology is a tool of oppression.

            Last week, Congress held hearings on the dynamics of white supremacy online and the perception that technology companies engage in anti-conservative bias. Many people who are seeped in history and committed to evidence-based decision-making are experiencing a collective sense of being gaslit—the concept that someone’s sense of reality can be intentionally destabilized by an abuser. How do you process a black conservative commentator testifying before the House saying, “’White nationalism’ is an invention of the Democrats to scare black people”?

            Let’s talk about Christchurch. A terrorist espousing white nationalist messages livestreamed himself brutally murdering 50 people worshipping in a New Zealand mosque. The video was framed like a first-person shooter from a video game. Beyond the atrocity itself, what else was happening? He produced a media spectacle. And he learned how to do it by exploiting the information ecosystem we’re currently in.

            This terrorist understood the vulnerabilities of both social media and news media. The message he posted on 8chan announcing his intention included links to his manifesto and other sites, but it did not include a direct link to Facebook; he didn’t want Facebook to know that the traffic came from 8chan. The video included many minutes of him driving around, presumably to build his audience but also, quite likely, in an effort to evade any content moderators that might be looking. He titled his manifesto with a well-known white nationalist call sign, knowing that the news media would cover the name of the manifesto, which in turn, would prompt people to search for that concept. And when they did, they’d find a treasure trove of anti-Semitic and white nationalist propaganda. This is the exploitation of what’s called a “data void.”

            Data voids are areas within a search ecosystem where there’s no relevant data; those who want to manipulate media purposefully exploit these. The goal is to first create a world of content and then to push it through to the news media at the right time so that people search for that term and receive certain content.

            He also trolled numerous people in his manifesto, knowing full well that the media would shine a spotlight on them and create distractions and retractions and more news cycles. Afterwards, every social platform was inundated with millions and millions of copies and alterations of the video uploaded through a range of fake accounts, either to burn the resources of technology companies, shame them, or test their guardrails for future exploits.

What’s most notable about this terrorist is that he’s explicit in his white nationalist commitments. Most of those who are propagating white supremacist logics are not. Whether we’re talking about the so-called “alt-right” who simply ask questions like “Are Jews people?” or people who are propagating conspiracy theories, this is agnotology at work.

            Teenagers aren’t radicalized only by extreme sites on the web. It now starts with a simple YouTube query. Perhaps you’re a college student trying to learn a concept like “social justice” that you’ve heard in a classroom. The first result you encounter is from PragerU, a conservative organization that is committed to undoing so-called “leftist” ideas that are taught at universities. You watch the beautifully produced video, which offers a biased and slightly conspiratorial take on what “social justice” is, suggesting that it’s not real, but instead a manufactured attempt to suppress you.

            After you watch this, you watch more videos of this kind from people who are professors and other apparent experts. This all makes you think differently about this term in your reading. You ask your professor a question raised by one of the YouTube influencers. She reacts in horror and silences you. The videos all told you to expect this. So now you want to learn more. You go deeper into a world of people who are actively anti-“social justice warriors.” You’re introduced to anti-feminism and so-called racial realism.

            One of the best ways to seed agnotology is to make sure that doubtful and conspiratorial content is easier to reach than scientific material. YouTube is the primary search engine for people under 25. It’s where high school and college students go to do research. Digital Public Library of America works with many phenomenal partners who are all working to curate and make available their archives. Yet, how much of that work is available on YouTube?

            Herein lies the problem. One of the best ways to seed agnotology is to make sure that doubtful and conspiratorial content is easier to reach than scientific material. And then to make sure that what scientific information is available, is undermined. Media manipulators optimize search engines, just like marketers. But they also look to create networks that are hard to undo. YouTube has great scientific videos about the value of vaccination, but countless anti-vaxxers have systematically trained YouTube to make sure that people who watch the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s videos also watch videos asking questions about vaccinations or videos of parents who are talking emotionally about what they believe to be the result of vaccination. They comment on both of these videos, they watch them together, they link them together.

            And this is where librarians come in. They believe in making sure the public is informed, but they will not achieve an informed public simply by making sure that high quality content is publicly available and presuming that credibility is enough while waiting for people to come find it. People have to understand the networked nature of the information war, and blanket the information ecosystem with the information people need to make informed decisions.