# Wiki tutorial ## Reflection on *Agnotology and Epistemological Fragmentation* by danah boyd In a time not too long ago, the main source people trusted for research materials was largely librarians. There were could be falsified sources, but there were gatekeepers at the publishing and curation level to minimize the reach of lies. The Internet was a massive disruption of that status quo, as danah boyd outlined in a 2019 speech to the Digital Public Library of America conference. She emphasizes that "agnotology," or deliberately fostered ignorance, was on the rise due to bad actors on the web. It's not a brand new concept: Iain Boal and Robert Proctor coined the term in 1995, and certain people have lied others into ignorance for decades. boyd outlines a number of contemporary elements that are pulling people into a world of ignorance, such as terrorists that know how to go viral, and the YouTube rabbit-hole towards "free-thinking" doubt of climate science and social justice. ![](https://i.imgur.com/IwgFdWL.jpg) (PragerU screenshots divorced from their rhetorical content are often humorously self-defeating) boyd provides a clear outline of the growing danger agnotology, and provides somewhat of a decisive objective to librarians, but some questions remain. A key elements is that she initially refers to agnotology as a tool of the powerful, but does not express a clear link to who's profiting off the spread of online conspiracies. To be fair, social media platforms and internet companies certainly are, but they're not the entities initially seeding most of these lies (I hope). Is she implying some sort of upper-class control, with capital interests pushing climate conspiracies so that greenhouse gases can keep being burned? Perhaps, but that doesn't clearly explain grand, cult-like conspiracies like QAnon or white supremacy groups. I'd further contend that while her recommendations to librarians to spread their content as publicly as possible are well-intentioned, the online conspiracy machine may very well be too powerful to be overcome without a comparative public movement against it. There are simply more conspiratorial grandmothers on Facebook than there are digital librarians, suggesting that may take regular citizens working to stamp agnotology out as well. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rvI68YO7dVY" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> ("The Gravel Institute" represents an attempt to counteract the specific rabbit-hole that PragerU is so committed to pulling users down, but doesn't quite fit the mold of proper academic education that boyd suggests.)
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Reading Responses (Set 2)

Mar 23 Tue - Finding Someone & Living Alone It's easy to believe that internet dating is ruining romance, that it's defined by shallowness, vanity, and brief flings that leave people feeling hollow and isolated. Some of that is true: for example, people on the dating site OkCupid did tend to lie about their height, finances, and looks (OkCupid, 2010). But Reberto Ferdman's (2016) interview with sociologist Michael Rosenfeld suggest otherwise, with online dating actually simplifying and improving relationships, even long-term ones. Rosenfeld emphasizes that online dating, with its inherent selectivity and periods of pre-conversation before a date, can actually whittle partners down much more quickly than previous forms of dating could. Instead of dating someone for a few months (who you met at work) and finding out your interests clash too much, you can find someone from your entire metro area who shares your tastes. In terms of downsides, he refutes the shallowness argument as essentially part of human nature, and notes that the jury is still out on people still dating within ethnic groups and not being more intermingled (it could just be algorithmic selection on the apps' part). There can be no argument that online dating hasn't completely changed how people interact with romance, and it almost certainly introduces new complications. One aspect Rosenfeld doesn't discuss is how much work online dating can be, how there's a lot of time and emotional labor that can go into it that conventional dating simply doesn't, at least not in the early stages. Speaking from a man's perspective (it can be dramatically different for women) it's not like matches are rushing to message you. It's not just my looks I hope, considering it's a similar story from many men I know, but I could be wrong. It can take a long time to match with anyone, and even longer to progress the conversation to a point where coffee or dinner sounds like a good idea. But a dramatic benefit, and one that wasn't really mentioned in the Ferdman piece is how it clearly sets the stakes, at least as one of two options. With online dating, the end result is either a temporary physical engagement or a proper relationship (unless one party is just looking for a free meal). When asking someone you know in school or work out, there are a lot more questions: Will they think this is just a friendly gesture? How could this change our dynamic in our workplace? Is this entirely within the rules of our organization (like hierarchy or disclosure rules with relationships in workplaces)? Dating apps eliminate all of these concerns, simplifying the purpose of the conversation in a distinctive way. After you've had to awkwardly navigate the dynamics of a single bad date with a colleague, it's hard not to prefer to the distance and clarity that dating apps bring. Mar 26 Fri - Breakup It's a bit inaccurate to say that technology has made ending relationships more complicated. Breaking up has always been a messy, challenging affair, one prone to uncertainty and people avoiding hard conversations. However, as outlined in the chapter "How Do You Know?" by Illana Gershon, what digital communication has introduced is several rich layers of indirect messaging with varying meanings. Gershon refers to this indirect messaging as "second-order information," essentially the context and meta-intent of digital acts that can convey meanings not clearly stated by words (p. 123). Examples of these second-order messages existed before digital communication too: letter writing can have plenty of subtleties, coded messages, and accidental revelations of the writer's opinions. Nonetheless, digital communication presents several new avenues for sending new meanings to an audience, intentionally or not. This is especially important in the fraught and occasionally tense world of romantic relationships, where digital natives can use the various tools of social media to signal displeasure in a partner, such as by flicking one's relationship status to "it's complicated" (p. 134). The amount of uncertainty that this convoluted world of second-order information introduces can leave people uncertain if they've truly broken up with a partner until the other person publicly reveals they're dating someone else (p. 140). While many of Gershon's examples are dated to the era when Facebook was a dominant platform for college-age students, many of the complications still remain. I would argue that several of the issues presented by second-order communication are inherently bound up in the cowardice and fickleness of youth. Age and maturity are what allow people to have difficult conversations easier, though I suppose plenty of people fail to ever develop those skills. I was struck by the Pew Research article by Lenhart, Anderson, & Smith, where it was found that a majority of teenagers found a breakup by text distasteful, but still several had either experienced it or done it themselves. As was also alluded to in Gershon's piece, it seems that many people find communicating through second-order information or indirect communication unpleasant and wrong, but people still readily do it. It speaks to a fundamental human tendency where we can recognize bad behavior, but if it makes our lives easier, and allows us to control how others interact with us, we'll do it. Recognizing the humanity and emotions of other people can be incredibly difficult. It's hard to really get to know people, or to see them cry in front of you when you hurt them. It's much easier to reduce someone to an item external to ourselves, a face on a page, a check-mark saying a message has been read, and a block button at the ready when it all seems a bit much. Is this a permanent progression? Are we stuck guessing at the second-order intentions of people more and more, as digital selves become real selves? Or can digital communication reach a point where those layers of metaphor and abstraction are reduced?

4/19/2021
Reading Responses (Set 1)

Reading Responses 5 out of 5 Jan 26 Tue: "Superconnected" by Mary Chayko What has become readily apparent in the past three decades is that the internet is not a simple tool, one which is used and then set aside through most of the day. As emphasized in the chapter "More Benefits and Hazards of 24/7 Superconnectedness" from Mary Chayko's Superconnected, there are substantial elements of the new digital age that have changed how millions live. She lists a myriad of different concerns that have been raised about the new status quo: supposed feelings of isolation, addiction to games and services, and increasing temptations to (unsuccessfully) multi-task. Chayko acknowledges these concerns, but largely considers them moot, either by emphasizing that forms of these issues existing prior to the internet or by noting advancements such as women's emotional labor being supported by social media connections. At times however, Chayko's arguments carry a sting of "whataboutism," or essentially trying to handwave away valid concerns as "old fashioned". Regarding video games, she mentions a study performed by Nick Yee, which found that 45% of studied gamers displayed symptoms of excessive involvement in interactive media to avoid/escape problems (p. 192). Chayko brushes this aside, citing Dmitri Williams, who noted that an obsessive reader wouldn't be viewed with such concern, and that fear of digital media is based on a Protestant work ethic (p. 192). This, as well as other statements, suggest that much of the negative portrayals of the internet in the chapter are meant to be the exception that proves the rule. Feb 05 Fri: Fake News A striking element in these readings was, unfortunately, the relative downward spiral we seem to be on. Silverman's piece on 2016 Facebook misinformation puts out a clear statistic: fake materials, usually from a far-right perspective, tend to have the highest engagement levels. danah boyd's 2017 post on media literacy's failures/backfires provides a logic for why misleading material does well. She points to a complicated blend of anti-intellectualism and individualist research, with a bit of material analysis mixed-in. After all, legitimate outlets often cost money, or doctors that dispel anti-vaccination movements are expensive to visit. The newest reading, Emily Dreyfuss's deconstruction of a single misinformation campaign, demonstrates where four years have taken us: to such powerful and believed misinformation that a single edited video clip can be a key cause of the January 6th incident that killed several.

3/11/2021
Filter and Label Your Email

Email Filtering Exercise Reading Engagement There's a distinct irony in the rather contradictory analysis of the condition of present internet culture and its effects on democracy. The subject of analysis is a lack of consensus and "truth," while the academics discussing the matter seemingly don't share a common thesis either. The main author discussed in all three readings, Eli Pariser is firmly in the camp that filtering bubbles are real, and likely quite negative. Facebook's own findings (to the extent they can be trusted), as well as writers such as Jacob Weisberg, disagree with a number of Pariser's raised concerns. They suggest that Facebook doesn't hide as much opposing content as has been suggested, or that Google search results aren't as user-specific as Pariser found (in a very small-N study) (Echo Chamber Revisited). There's a certain contradiction at the heart of concerns about internet misinformation. On one hand, we worry about filter bubbles: the idea that people are only taking in like-minded information. On the other, there's a concern about the sheer quantity of information that an individual can come across, both factual and false. The problem there being that if there's too much to ascertain the veracity of, people will default to what they will agree with. But that "problem" fundamentally means that people are being exposed to other views, potentially even over-exposed. Clay Shirky hints at this idea, though more from the angle of aggravation, that in fact being online allows people to realize just how many people exist with opposing viewpoints, which actually causes them to double-down and become more polarized (Echo Chamber Revisited).

2/11/2021
Web Search and Evaluation

Google Searches Wikipedia Search Initial search (11,400 results): English-only: Skate Fish Huskies (2001-2002)

2/2/2021
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