About this Event
Cornell University Mann Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
https://cals.cornell.edu/communication/about-us/eventsRelational Epistemology: Accountability in the Knowledge Forager-Nester Bond
Drew Margolin, Associate Professor, Department of Communication, Cornell University
2pm in 102 Mann
Reception to follow in the Hub
Dr. Margolin will present work in progress on what he calls relational epistemology. Relational epistemology attempts to understand the relational conditions that make it mutually productive for one party to accept another’s assertions about reality. Many citizens refuse to abide by the knowledge gathered through legitimate methods of inquiry. Relational epistemology frames this as a breakdown in the social bonds between knowledge foragers and knowledge nesters. Knowledge foragers are those, like scientists or journalists, granted resources to retrieve useful new information to guide communal action. Knowledge nesters are those, like citizens, who grant these resources and agree to allow these findings to guide them. Because nesters voluntarily give power to foragers, it follows that they must have some way of holding foragers accountable for this power or it is not in their interest to continue to grant it. In this talk he shows, first, that the conventional solution to this accountability problem, which he calls justification (of knowledge claims), is insufficient. Next, he shows that other bases of accountability do exist and may provide important augmentation to justification.
Drew Margolin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and director of the Cornell Computational Communication Lab. The internet, and social media in particular, have made individual and institutional discourse visible like never before. Yet the production of discourse — what leads individuals or institutions to speak up, whom do they address, what do they say — is not yet well understood. Dr. Margolin’s research focuses on understanding these dynamics through the quantitative aggregation of collective communication behavior. In particular, his approach emphasizes the role that accountability, credibility, and legitimacy within social networks plays in determining how individuals and institutions produce discourse on a large scale.
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