INTRODUCTION: (DIS)INFORMATION, POWER AND IDEOLOGY

Before we can discuss solutions, we need to agree on the problem or, at least, the nature of our concerns. In the discussion about (dis)information and democracy, I think there are at least two fundamental and fundamentally different sources of concern: the future of democracy and the control of information. From the viewpoint of democratic ideals and values, the question of control in general, and of control of information in particular, is always a very problematic one. From the viewpoint of control, or rather of the elites and groups that seek control, democracy may also be a problematic condition. Different sets of problems but also different and in many respects competing sets of concerns feed into the relevance of the current debate about disinformation and democracy in the digital age.

Here, I would like to engage with these problems and concerns from a perspective that would allow the reader to appreciate the roots and the implications of both. To this end, I suggest that the differences and competitive aspects can be better appreciated if we look at each viewpoint as constituted by an ideological and an epistemic dimension or, in other words, by a particular vision of the future of society and the nature of knowledge that may, or may not, bring it about.

Consequently, the approach of what follows is explicitly normative and, from this perspective, the debate about the problems of (dis)information and the concerns about the future of democracy is one particular (albeit fundamental) articulation of the broader theme concerning the ‘remaking of truth’ in the digital age. In this discussion, and from the viewpoint of democratic ideals, epistemic and political problems (or the problems of knowledge and the competition for the control over the distribution of power in society) are interwoven because the practical possibility of a democratic regime depends on the problematisation of truth.

The role of (dis)information is thus a key one, but is also both complex and ambivalent. It is complex because, as Michel Foucault famously argued in his lectures on ‘parrhesia’ and the problematisation of truth, it has deep and wide ramifications that cannot be ignored.