PERITIA Panel on Misinformation at MANCEPT Workshops

PERITIA team members Carline Klijnman and Lucas Dijker are co-convening the workshop ‘Misinformation, Expertise and Challenges to Democracy’ together with Dr. Jonathan Benson (University of Manchester), to be held 7-9 of September as part of the 2022 MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory at the University of Manchester.

“While expert testimony is often crucial to policy issues as diverse as climate change and internet regulation, public discourse appears to be increasingly polarised so that even scientific reporting becomes the subject of partisan hostility, prompting questions regarding the nature and stability of public trust in science. Questions are therefore raised about the appropriate role of knowledge and expertise in a democratic society, and whether potential epistemic dysfunctions threaten to undermine core democratic values.

While misinformation and expertise often take centre stage in discussions of democracy’s epistemic challenges, such concerns extend also to issues of testimony and epistemic injustice, political polarisation, populism and technocracy, voter ignorance, and developments in media and communication technology. All these issues raise instrumental concerns about the effectiveness of democratic decision-making and its ability to produce desirable outcomes, but also procedural concerns for mutual respect, the equal standing of citizens, and the quality of democratic deliberation and public justification.

This workshop invites discussion of these epistemic challenges and the wider normative questions they provoke about the role of knowledge and expertise in democratic politics.”

Find out more about the workshop and the topics of interest, as well as the full 3-day programme including PERITIA investigators Cathrine Holst and Gloria Origgi and other outstanding scholars of Political Theory and Philosophy.