Epistemic Contestations in the Hybrid Media Environment

Points of epistemic contestation, where competing ideas about what counts as legitimate knowledge come into conflict, are central to global challenges, from identity politics to religious conflicts and conspiracy theories. This book delves into today’s epistemic crisis by exploring the relationship between knowledge(s), the media and society.

It explores the ‘post-truth’ phenomenon and today's ‘epistemic crisis’ not merely as a crisis of epistemic hierarchies and worldviews in Western liberal democracies, but as a crisis of knowledge production within epistemic institutions, including academia. Through detailed case studies ranging from conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns to religious knowledge production and political communication, the contributors demonstrate how global communication technology has empowered minority collective understandings of the world and undermined older hegemonic communitarian worldviews, while at the same time empowering bad actors to create structural patterns of discord or uncertainty.

Drawing on research in media studies, study of religion, political communication and digital sociology, this volume provides essential insights for scholars, students and practitioners seeking to understand how knowledge, truth and power intersect in our hybrid media environment. The essays in this book were originally published as a special issue of Popular Communication.