Abstract
A familiar criticism of Donald Trump is that, in watching only Fox News and similar news sources, he is creating a dangerous echo chamber for himself. Echo chambers are said to be responsible for a host of today’s problems, including the degradation of democracy. This diagnosis is fundamentally incorrect, and this chapter examines the two dominant explanations of the distinctively epistemic problem with echo chambers and shows that each is wanting. Echo chambers, by themselves, are not epistemically problematic. Echo chambers are characterized in purely structural terms, but what is needed to capture what is wrong with Trump’s exposure to only Fox News is content-sensitive. It is not that Trump is relying on a single source for news, but that he is relying on one that is unreliable. Finally, the chapter calls attention to the challenge of social media bots and the role of non-ideal social epistemology.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Epistemology of Fake News |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Pages | 206-227 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9780198863977 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 20 2021 |
Keywords
- Bots
- Diversity
- Echo chamber
- Fake news
- Lack of awareness
- Lack of independence
- Social epistemology
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Arts and Humanities