Fake news and epistemic agency in the politics of disinformation

A defense of the traditional press

Abstract

In this paper, I will discuss how the fake news phenomenon, recurrent in a variety of contemporary political scenarios, presents itself as a symptom of a systematic breakdown of normative epistemic protocols of the information evaluation processes that undermines the rigor of criteria of judgment oriented towards factual truth. Therefore, we assume that the press, that is, the means of production and transmission of information historically established as good informants, has a privileged status of epistemic credibility with regard to reporting on factual truths and how, in the politics of disinformation, this status is not only neglected but, at times, undermined, creating a state of unhealthiness in the public opinion with harmful sociopolitical effects. Finally, I also comment on how the fleeting flow of information in the age of the internet and social networks creates a fertile environment for the defective and fragmented epistemic agency advanced by the fake news phenomenon.