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What’s Your Reality? Evaluating Sources and Addressing “Fake News”
Author(s) -
Lindemann Danielle J.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
sociological forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.937
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1573-7861
pISSN - 0884-8971
DOI - 10.1111/socf.12615
Subject(s) - privilege (computing) , contingency , precarity , sociology , presidential system , empiricism , news media , position (finance) , public relations , media studies , epistemology , political science , law , politics , gender studies , philosophy , finance , economics
It is important to know where the 2020 presidential candidates stand on today’s issues, but it’s also critical to know how they mobilize evidence to arrive at these opinions. What are their media diets? How do they decide what’s news? And how do they evaluate what news is true? What forms of expertise do they privilege in making decisions about reality? Sociologists, as experts ourselves, hold a particular stake in the answers to these questions. But when it comes to deciding what’s real, we also occupy a somewhat precarious position. We simultaneously privilege empiricism while recognizing the precarity and contingency of all knowledge.