tackling threats to informed decision making in democratic societies promoting epistemic security in a technologically advanced world

• DOI: 10.17863/cam.64183
• Publication Date: 2020-10-14
• Authors: Seger, Elizabeth; Avin, Shahar; Pearson, Gavin; Briers, Mark; Ó Heigeartaigh, Seán; Bacon, Helena
• Keywords: disinformation; Epistemic security; epistemic threat; information technology; 16. Peace & justice; misinformation; epistemic infrastructure

Access to reliable information is crucial to the ability of a democratic society to coordinate effective collective action when responding to a crisis, like a global pandemic, or complex challenge like climate change. Through a series of workshops we developed and analysed a set of hypothetical yet plausible crisis scenarios to explore how technologically exacerbated external threats and internal vulnerabilities to a society’s epistemic security – its ability to reliably avert threats to the processes by which reliable information is produced, distributed, and assessed within the society – can be mitigated in order to facilitate timely decision-making and collective action in democratic societies. Overall we observed that preserving a democratic society’s epistemic security is a complex effort that sits at the interface of many knowledge domains, theoretical perspectives, value systems, and institutional responsibilities, and we developed a series of recommendations to highlight areas where additional research and resources will likely have a significant impact on improving epistemic security in democratic societies