Epistemic responsibilities in the COVID-19 pandemic: Is a digital infosphere a friend or a foe?

Abstract

Digital technologies have a significant role in collecting, filtering and disseminating information, allowing for social, healthcare and economic activities even in the context of highly restrictive public health measures in the current COVID-19 pandemic. As personal contact is greatly reduced, they also create a shared informational landscape, allowing for a shared threat response. This is a difficult task, since truthfulness of content that leads to actionable knowledge is impossible to consistently validate. So, not only that curation of information is rarely congruent with pressing health issues, but digital spaces may also become fertile ground for misinformation and disinformation, contributing to the devastating effects of an infodemic. Digital intermediaries are useful exactly because their representation of reality is not a true construct, but a result of purposely curated information. However, they are active, dynamic epistemological agents with their own logic and aim. In dealing with a pandemic, we should reconsider the ways how our digital informational landscapes are created and sustained. This urges us to consider ethical governance of digital data curation and dissemination, alongside forms of control of the truthfulness and reach of its content. Some of the most fundamental issues in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, including the newly available vaccines are reliant on digital information and data sharing among experts, and the role of informing the general public. The need to create a reproducible, valid and truthful informational landscape is paramount, while allowing for free and rational, behavioral individual choices oriented toward preserving and promoting healthy behavior. These are issues at the heart of dealing with any pandemic, as well as a well-organized health care policy.

Keywords: CoViD-19; Data science; Digital intermediary; Epistemology; Information.

Graphical abstract