Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic has engendered turmoil around our globe, rendering an urgent need for accurate, truthful information as a life-saving resource for humanity. However, coinciding with this global, deadly pandemic is the proliferation of fake news. While pandemics and fake news are not new phenomena, an unprecedented time in history is presently unfolding when considered with the postdigital era. Digital media enables the prolific repetitious spread of fake news during crises when accurate and truthful information is necessary. Consequently, the ability of humans to discern between fact and fiction diminishes. It has resulted in some people making life-ending decisions based on their exposure to fake news. In this article, I define a primarily ignored and invisible epistemological process at work: negative epistemic postdigital inculcation, that, while has been at work with the rise of modern digital media, has primarily become visible because of the interrelationships between implicit learning, Covid-19, fake news, and digital media. While the inculcation outlined in this paper occurs mostly outside of our awareness, I discuss a role for education in helping reduce the ensuing mortal coil of fake news.
Highlights
The Covid-19 pandemic has engendered turmoil around our globe, rendering an urgent need for accurate, truthful information as a life-saving resource for humanity
While the inculcation outlined in this paper occurs mostly outside of our awareness, I discuss a role for education in helping reduce the ensuing mortal coil of fake news
While negative epistemic postdigital inculcation is a phenomenon that has occurred before this present-day pandemic, Covid-19 has illuminated its undoubtable visibility because some people’s beliefs and behaviour are directly affected by exposure to fake news through digital media
Summary
The term ‘fake news’ surged into mainstream media and social networking sites during the US 2016 election campaign. I claim an invisible epistemological problem is at work: negative epistemic postdigital inculcation This process provides insight into why some people believe fake news, and why they make decisions based on false information. While digital media enhances our daily activity in many ways enabling us to connect and access information as we have never before, perform work, and engage in leisure or daily occupations—when combined with human minds and fake news, it is insidious because of what I coin as: negative epistemic postdigital inculcation – the repetitious exposure to false, misleading, or inaccurate epistemic resources through digital media that become tacit epistemological resources and impact on beliefs and behavior. While negative epistemic postdigital inculcation is a phenomenon that has occurred before this present-day pandemic, Covid-19 has illuminated its undoubtable visibility because some people’s beliefs and behaviour are directly affected by exposure to fake news through digital media
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