Why We Need Epistemic Rights

This chapter proposes that to save democracy we need to radically enhance citizens’ knowledge and that to understand the challenges that the global community is currently facing, as well as the opportunities, we have to respond to them. The starting point is the deepening divisions within our societies, which derive from both external and internal forces. As democracy is, by definition, the rule of the people, its basic requirement is equality in the act of ruling: in order to have equality in decision-making, people should share the same information and knowledge and understand the value and significance of this knowledge. In this chapter, I introduce the concept of epistemic rights, which refers to this requirement, understood in the sense that society should guarantee that all its citizens will be given truthful information and knowledge and the competence to use these for their own benefit and that of society as a whole. To illuminate the historical background of the concept, the chapter then gives a short historical review of the communication rights movement, which can be seen as paving the way for epistemic rights. Third, some reflections based on this review are offered. In conclusion, the chapter articulates the need for the further investigation of epistemic institutions and their role in democracy.

Epistemic Rights: The Concept

The common conclusion of many reports, applying different indicators, is that democracy is in decline in Europe and globally. Even in countries with a long history of democratic development, neo-authoritarian tendencies have increased (see V-Dem Institute, 2021; Freedom House, 2022). This observation has been made in several countries worldwide where governments exert control over the media, restrict the movement of people, and even interfere with the autonomy of the independent judiciary. These characteristics are seen in autocracies on all continents, but political forces that support and promote similar goals have gained increasing support even in countries not governed by an authoritarian regime. Their influence has led other parties to emulate their policies, as can be particularly seen in hardened negative attitudes to immigration around Europe.

The symptoms of this right-wing protest should not be confused with its sources. Anti-elitism and decreased trust in authorities are symptoms of much deeper social problems, not sources of populist protest. The use of social media to spread hate speech and disinformation is also a symptom, rather than a source, of racism and intolerance against minorities, although it obviously exacerbates the problem. Lessons drawn from around the world, not least from the United States under the Trump administration, have taught us that the fundamental basis of distrust and populist mobilisation is people’s deep sense of social injustice resulting from their experience of increasing inequality and deepening class divisions.

Modern neo-authoritarianism appears to be the result of two opposing forces. On the one hand, it is a product of right-wing populist movements that use liberal democracy to challenge the rule of the political, economic, and cultural elites, whom they see as their enemies. On the other hand, it is also the product of political and economic elites who see the populist challenge as threatening the systemic balance that works in their favour. Instead of addressing this problem, the elites attempt to contain populist protests. Even in the liberal democratic Nordic countries in Europe, known as social welfare states, the elites do this by complying with some of the populist parties’ demands, such as introducing anti-immigration policies (Denmark), blocking populists’ path to power, often by forging coalitions against populist parties (Sweden), and restricting their public appearances, thereby minimising their media presence (Sweden) (Milne, 2015; Berman, 2021; Peker, 2021).

There is widespread concern about the state of democracy today. Various analyses and proposals have approached this issue differently (e.g., Merke, 2014; Przeworski, 2019; Fitzi et al., 2020; Crouch, 2020; Kriesi, 2020; Anderson & Rainie, 2020). When thinking of potential solutions to the malaise of democracy, it is helpful to remember that liberal democracy as a political system is always based on a paradox. In elections, people are free to award a majority to parties which promote illiberal and anti-democratic policies. We must ask ourselves what is wrong with the European model of liberal democracy today. One possible answer lies in epistemic inequality, which concerns the widening gap in information, knowledge, and understanding between the elites and the majority of the population. This gap has produced two opposing regimes of information, knowledge, and truth: one that is owned and interpreted by the elites and the other that is labelled mis- and disinformation, fake news, and alternative truths, owned by disgruntled and disenfranchised members of society.

In contrast to the early optimism attached to the ‘digital revolution’, which appeared to promise virtual democracy and open access to information and knowledge (e.g., Negroponte, 1995; Dertouzos & Gates, 1998), epistemic inequalities appear to be growing in more digitalised societies (Norris, 2001; McChesney, 2013; van Dijk, 2020). There are more information channels than ever (including an assortment of television and radio channels and a growing number of social media platforms). Still, there is less control over the truthfulness and honesty of their offerings than there was over pre-digital media. With the advance of social media platforms comes ever less accountability for the content which is freely available on them. Despite the vast amount of information available through various media sources, the number of central information gatekeepers has decreased due to media and communication ownership concentration. The power of bottleneck controllers, who regulate our supply of daily information, knowledge, and truths, is greater than ever. For example, when Elon Musk bought Twitter in autumn 2022, he started immediately to change its terms of use to follow his free speech absolutism, that is, removing restrictions on disinformation and hate speech (Frenkel & Conger, 2022; Glozer et al., 2022). The CEO and biggest shareholder of Meta (previously Facebook), Mark Zuckerberg, has been charged numerous times over breaches of Facebook users’ privacy (see Rushe & Milmo, 2022; Dataconomy, 2022). More examples of digital platforms’ misuse of their power and clearly illegal activities are easy to find.

What is required to be an informed and active member of society today is different from what was needed 20 or even 10 years ago. Through digitalisation and globalisation, our everyday environment has changed profoundly. With mounting global problems—climate change, terrorism, political tensions between big countries, etc.—our lives have become more complex and unpredictable in many ways. The role of experts and specialists in interpreting and translating the world around us has increased enormously (Nguyen, 2020; Hardwig, 1985; Kutrovátz, 2010). When making choices that affect our lives and the lives of other members of society, we must trust specialists on issues such as climate change, national and global economies, and domestic and international security. We usually do so without judging the truthfulness of their information and knowledge and the full consequences of our choices.

It thus follows that for democracy to adhere to its normative principles, citizens must have fundamental epistemic rights related to knowledge and understanding. These include:

  • Equality in access to and availability of all relevant and truthful information that concerns issues of will formation and decision-making,

  • Equality in obtaining competence in critically assessing and applying knowledge for citizens’ own good as well as for the public good,

  • Equality in public deliberation about will formation and decision-making in matters of public interest,

  • Equal freedom from external influence and pressure when making choices.

As a concept, epistemic rights are not new. Social philosophers have traditionally applied them in relation to the justification of beliefs (see Dretske, 2000; Wenar, 2003; Watson, 2018, pp. 89–91). More recently, Zuboff (2019) adopted the concept of people’s right to privacy and personal information, and Risse proposed the concept of epistemic actorhood in the datafied society, which can only be realised through epistemic rights (Risse, 2021). In this chapter, epistemic rights are understood more widely, following the definition given by Watson (2018, p. 91; see also 2021, pp. 47–64):

As well as the right to an informed medical diagnosis, you have rights to information about the food you eat, the products you buy, your child’s education, the conditions of your employment, your mortgage, your taxes, and so on. You have a right to know how much interest you are being charged on your credit card. You have a right to understand the details of any legal contract that you sign. You have the right not to incriminate yourself in a court of law and the right to remain silent. Talk of epistemic rights, while not in general talked of as epistemic rights, is commonplace.

Thus, epistemic rights are about knowledge—not only about being informed, but also about being informed truthfully, understanding the relevance of information, and acting on its basis for the benefit of oneself and society as a whole. The role of epistemic institutions is crucial: we have a right to assume that the primary providers of societal information—the media, the education system, public authorities—work for the public good and serve us with truthful information and knowledge. Although institutions and practices of media and communication are not the only parts of our ‘epistemic ecosystem’, they are one of its most visible and significant parts. However, they must not hinder us from looking for the deep structures that create, sustain, and reproduce everything we understand as ‘the Truth’—everything that makes our social and cultural being.

The notion of epistemic rights, as developed here, is indebted to Jürgen Habermas’ (2006, 2009) work on deliberation and his discussion on its epistemic dimension, which is fundamental to democracy. In this respect, the notion is also broader: it covers more areas of social action than the more commonly adopted concept of communication rights, which often focuses narrowly on media and communication functions. I will discuss communication rights in the following section.

From Communication Rights to Epistemic Rights

The legitimacy of (liberal) democracy as a political system rests on the promise of its citizens being equal in their will formation and decision-making, including equality in the availability of information and knowledge. However, this premise is not enough in today’s increasingly complex world. There must also be equality in understanding the real consequences of our choices, which, in practice, means asking questions such as the following: Were American voters conscious of the potential consequences of voting for Trump in 2016? Were voters in the United Kingdom fully aware of the possible implications of Brexit in 2016? Did the Hungarian electorate understand the consequences of their actions when they voted for increased isolation from the rest of Europe in 2022?

It is important to note that although the role of the media in society is crucial, they do not comprise the only institution that provides us with knowledge, information, understanding, and truth. The primary sources for these are family, formal education and other forms of socialisation, and learning to cope in society and culture (Dehghan, 2011; Wiseman et al., 2011; Karpov, 2016). The role of the media is to update us daily about the outside world, providing information, orientation, entertainment, social connections, and a platform for self-expression. Media can do this only when we have a valid reference basis offered by education and overall socialisation, which is necessary to understand any media content.

Traditionally, the requirements for epistemic rights in relation to the media, in particular, have been debated and campaigned for under banners such as the freedom of the press, communication rights, media education and media literacy, and cultural rights. These issues and campaigns are more or less directly based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of the United Nations XE "United Nations" (1948) and the numerous international agreements which followed from it. (For further elaboration, see also Communication Rights in Information Society (CRIS) Campaign (2005, pp. 41–43).)

As mentioned above, several campaigns and movements have pursued similar goals that we call epistemic rights. One of the most influential is the campaign for communication rights, which has been ongoing for more than 50 years. In the following sections, I will discuss its trajectory and reflect on it from the viewpoint of epistemic rights developed above.

Three Phases of the Communication Rights Movement

The history of the communication rights campaign has three phases: 1970s–1980s, in connection with UNESCO’s New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO); 1990s–2000s, in connection with the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS); and 2010–present, a period marked by regulatory challenges concerning the internet and global media platforms.

The New World Information and Communication Order

The contemporary academic discussion of communication rights started in the 1970s. At that time, the discourse was closely connected to the rise of the global anti-colonial movement, as several countries, mainly African and Asian, fought for their independence. An influential body in this campaign was a group of non-aligned countries organised under the Non-aligned Movement (NAM; Milan & Padovani, 2014; CRIS Campaign, 2005). Many academic scholars sided with the group’s proposal to rectify the uneven distribution of global resources between the developed countries of the Global North and the developing countries of the Global South (Padovani & Nordenstreng, 2005). This asymmetry was felt strongly in the media and communication sector, which was dominated not only technically, but also culturally and professionally, by Western countries, particularly the United States. A significant milestone in this development was UNESCO’s 1980 resolution on the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), which was based on extensive preparatory work in the form of the so-called MacBride Report commissioned by UNESCO in 1977 (Padovani, 2015).

Although the resolution was unanimously adopted by UNESCO, in the Cold War environment two major Western countries—the United States and the United Kingdom—strongly resisted the idea of the NWICO. They saw it as ‘a potential threat to their cultural industries’ global opportunities, and an attack on the doctrine of the free flow of information, their basic normative reference’ (Padovani, 2015, p. 2).

Reflecting the realities of the Cold War era, the NWICO was adopted by the majority of UNESCO’s member countries as an instrument in the ideological and political battle between the Cold War blocs—the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies—much to the detriment of the NAM countries. As Padovani (2015, p. 2) remarks, ‘the USSR took advantage of the situation to promote state control over information flows and reduce the capacity of communication satellites to interfere with Soviet-bloc media control’. This historical context rendered the NWICO relatively short-lived as a political and intellectual movement, although it continued for some years in conferences and publications.

Considering the ideological and political atmosphere in the early 1980s, it might not be fair to say that one of the weaknesses of the NWICO was its limitation to the sphere of media and communication, leaving other aspects of epistemic rights to other areas. However, its fate illustrates the global power imbalance in media and communication even today, where only a few companies have a practical monopoly or semi-monopoly of the worldwide communication network.

Towards the World Summit on Information Society

During the 1980s and 1990s, the claim to communication rights found new ground, gaining impetus from grassroots movements rather than governments and international organisations. These movements originated from community media initiatives in several countries in both the Global South and North on behalf of groups and communities that were not otherwise heard through the mainstream media. A crucial connecting factor between these two fronts was the fight for gender equality in the media. Another common source of mobilisation was that these movements were a reaction to neoliberal policy and the deregulation of media and communication.

The culmination of this renewed communication rights movement was the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005, organised not by UNESCO but by the ITU, reflecting the diminished international status of UNESCO. In addition to the two traditional stakeholders, governments and the private sector, civil society organisations were invited to the WSIS as the third main stakeholder. Participants at the Tunis summit included 1500 delegates from international organisations, 6200 from civil society organisations, and 4800 from the private sector (UN General Assembly, 2006).

The first part of the WSIS, held in Geneva in 2003, focused on questions related to the implications of the digitalisation of information and communication. Unfortunately for the critical scholarly community, the event was hijacked by the combined forces of governments and the private sector, accentuated by the fact that several industry lobbying organisations secretly participated as civil society representatives and thus gained influence through two stakeholder platforms. The main issue discussed at the WSIS was internet governance. A compromise was achieved at the second WSIS conference in Tunis in 2005 in the Internet Governance Forum, which was formally established in 2006.

Scholars observed a noticeable gap between the academic and activist generations of the NWICO and WSIS. Referring to NWICO, Padovani and Nordenstreng (2005, pp. 264–265) stated that ‘an awareness on [NWICO’s] relevance to contemporary communication debates is restricted to a narrow sphere of academia and some non-governmental organizations’, which led to the WSIS developing ‘in the absence of any historical perspective’.

However, the high mobilisation of civil society movements before and during the WSIS did not last long. The central framework for coordinating civil society networks was a loose organisation called the Communication Rights in Information Society (CRIS). After publishing a highly relevant document titled Assessing Communication Rights: A Handbook (CRIS Campaign, 2005), CRIS rapidly lost its dynamism, and it vanished in just a few years. A central global organisation that still exists and carries on the traditions of both the NWICO and WSIS is the Centre for Communication Rights, established and managed by the World Association of Christian Communication (WACC). (See also Indymedia, 2021; Kidd, 2011.)

From the viewpoint of epistemic rights, the problem with WSIS was that it narrowed the campaign both thematically and organisationally to pre-given frameworks and included embedded institutional power relations which civil society networks were not able to resist fully. Thus, despite the CRIS campaign presenting a well-developed analysis and programme of action, which included many early elements paving the way for a conceptualisation of epistemic rights, the momentum was not yet there (see CRIS Campaign, 2005).

After the Geneva and Tunis Conferences

After the WSIS, the communication rights movement experienced a prolonged period of reflection. Activities were mainly restricted to local and regional campaigns and initiatives and academic reflections in the aftermath of WSIS. Around the same time, in the 2010s, the implications of the rapidly advancing digitalisation of media and communication started to gain wider international attention.

The changes brought about by digitalisation and the rise of the internet were already evident by 2010, when issues such as the right of access to computers, software, and networks, freedom of expression in online environments, and protection of privacy arose in public discussion (Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2021). However, although the increasing power and influence of the global media and communication intermediaries (the telecom industry and social media platforms) were recognised and accounted for, the extent of the transformation that has taken place in the global media and communication environment and its full effects were impossible to predict or prepare for.

In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and 2009, the rapid expansion of digital intermediaries profoundly transformed the global media and communication environment and ecosystem. Both civil society organisations and policymakers have subsequently debated various aspects of this evolution (see, e.g., Ambrose & Ausloos, 2013; EC, 2019; BEREC, 2022). However, many crucial questions remain only partially addressed. These include the democratic global regulation of the internet, the control of the algorithmisation of our everyday media and communication environment, increasing digital surveillance of citizens and targeted political and commercial advertising,; the increasing filtering of citizens’ voices through the software and platforms of the ‘Big Five’ tech companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook Apple, and Microsoft, or GAFAM), and the unchecked economic power of telecoms and platforms. Although often treated as separate political issues, these topics are central to the enactment of epistemic rights.

Digital Rights?

In response to the significant transformations discussed above, the demand for digital rights gained increasing attention in the mid-2010s (Karppinen & Puukko, 2020; Mathiesen, 2014; Maréchal, 2015; Soh et al., 2018; Finck & Moscon, 2019; Digital Freedom Fund, 2021). Some commentators view the digital rights movement as a continuation of previous generations of communication rights movements (Soh et al., 2018). Others see an entirely new category of rights, representing the fourth generation of human rights, because of the significant changes brought about by digitalisation (Karppinen & Puukko, 2020). However, many digital rights protagonists do not see their activities as having any relation to previous rights movements but see themselves instead as pioneers of a new digital frontier.

On the basis of the declarations and policy documents of a number of global movements and organisations, Karppinen and Puukko (2020) distinguished four different discourses on digital rights: (1) digital rights as the protection of negative liberties. This discourse covers issues from privacy and state surveillance to traditional free expression anti-censorship activism; (2) positive rights and state obligations. In this discourse, digital media are perceived as a potential instrument for the realisation and promotion of human rights more generally, even to the point of asking if access to the internet should be seen as a human right in itself; (3) digital rights as a vehicle of ‘informational justice’. In this discourse, rights are broadly conceived as a vehicle of informational justice. Digital media are seen ‘as tools that enable the promotion of broader human rights-related goals’ (Karppinen & Puukko, 2020, p. 317); and (4) rights and business: affordances provided by platforms. Digital rights are here seen as ‘entitlements provided by platforms or digital intermediaries, such as Facebook or Google’ (Karppinen & Puukko, 2020, p. 319).

On the basis of Karppinen and Puukko’s analysis, discourses on digital rights appear to be characterised by technological determinism. Broader issues about power in societies are seen through a narrow vantage point of digital technology and its social and cultural potential. Connections to previous movements on communication rights and the epistemic dimensions that they offer are mostly missing.

Lessons Learned from Past Movements

Several lessons can be learned from the three generations of communication rights movements discussed above.

The first-generation movement for communication rights (NWICO) was shaped by two intertwining factors: the global power balance of the Cold War and the anti-colonial struggles of newly independent countries in the Global South. It was a state-centred movement formed under the umbrella of the UN and other intergovernmental organisations. It aimed to work and have influence within the established structures of communication and information policy and regulation. Although the fundamental ethos and critical analysis of the movement were valid at the time, it represented a top-down approach where the acting subjects were states and governments, not citizens and civil society actors. Its legacy faded when the Cold War ended and the Global South encountered new challenges, such as economic globalisation. However, in offering a global and theoretically developed platform for critically campaigning on issues related to epistemic rights, the NWICO was a vital predecessor of the epistemic rights campaign.

The second-generation movement (WSIS) consisted of smaller local movements and a more comprehensive global network of activists who saw communication rights as a part of a broader mobilisation for social justice and collective and communal control of media and communication. The movement’s strength grew through grassroots civil society movements and their connecting networks that aimed to establish regional and global networks between local campaigns to raise the issues and claims of communication justice in political arenas. At the same time, the fragmented nature of the movement made it vulnerable, as the networks and local movements lacked solid institutional structures. Moreover, the WSIS made it apparent that the campaign, with its weak system, had become overwhelmed by the rapid development of new media powers—no longer states and governments, but global mono- and oligopolies (for a synthesis of these developments by the mid-2010s, see Padovani and Calabrese (2014)). However, from the viewpoint of epistemic rights, it seems that the whole legacy of the WSIS civil society movement has not been recognised, as the still very topical communication rights handbook issued by the CRIS Campaign (2005) exemplifies.

Developments since the WSIS make it challenging to discuss the communication rights movement as a single entity. Despite differences in emphasis between the first and second generations, the generations shared a common normative platform about the importance of democratic media policy and regulation and the state’s role in guaranteeing communication rights to all. However, the new generation of digital rights does not have a common allegiance. Instead, it seems to be divided between different normative platforms; some share the democratic ethos of previous generations, while others promote individual and libertarian positions against all collectivist forms of organisation. For them, digital rights are individual rights, covering demands from open software to the freedom of cyberspace, where neither states nor private-sector intermediaries should have dominance (EDRi, 2021; Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2021; Internet Rights and Principles Coalition, 2021; for an analysis, see Milan & Padovani, 2014, p. 30).

Based on the analysis above, today’s communication rights movement might be overly fragmented, making it unlikely that enough common ground can be found to mount a coordinated campaign. The different factions of the communication rights movement emphasise various issues, including:

  • How do we define the core rights that need to be protected and their subjects or claimants? Are the rights only individual, or do they belong to groups and communities?

  • To whom should the claims for rights be addressed: governments, international organisations, private companies, or civil society networks?

  • How should media and communication be governed? What should be the relationship between law-based, self-regulatory, and co-regulatory instruments? What role should global, regional, and national bodies play in relation to one another?

  • A common question: how do we define the sources and reasons for inequalities in information and communication, blocking the actualisation of communication rights? (For more, see Philip M. Napoli’s Chap. 4 in this volume).

By linking the problems of information and communication to a wider societal context and to the present predicaments of other epistemic institutions (education, public services, cultural institutions, etc.), the concept of epistemic rights might offer the common ground we lack and help in overcoming the divisions.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have advocated the concept of epistemic rights as a remedy for the condition of liberal democracy. I have argued that one of the main obstacles to democracy today is epistemic inequality. Citizens are not equally informed and do not share the same level of knowledge about the consequences of their choices. This fact can be seen in parliamentary or local elections. For example, during the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom in 2016, so much mis- and disinformation was circulated that, for an average citizen, a fully informed choice was nearly impossible. The mainstream media played a large part in this campaign (Watson, 2018).

The question is whether we can develop social and cultural institutions in our everyday lives that support epistemic equality in today’s circumstances. Considering the current neo-authoritarian and anti-democratic trends analysed above, doing so appears to be an uphill battle. However, if we are serious about defending democracy and willing to make an effort to do so, the concept of epistemic rights offers a platform that addresses the core of liberal democracy: citizens’ equality in will formation and decision-making. At its heart, democracy is about making choices between alternative ways of acting. Equality in will formation is possible only if citizens have equal availability of truthful information and knowledge and equal opportunity to understand why a choice is necessary and what the potential alternatives, conditions, and consequences are.

Having reviewed the three generations of communication rights movements, I concluded that it is not enough to speak about communication rights in today’s increasingly complex world and concentrate only on the media as the leading institution that should right the wrongs. Instead, all epistemic institutions—institutions dealing with knowledge, information, understanding, and truth—must be brought into the analysis. These include education systems, libraries, different cultural institutions (e.g., museums and theatres), and public services, all of which form, disseminate, and reproduce our daily normality and represent social and cultural continuity and stability.

The media, undoubtedly, are among the significant ‘influencers’ in our everyday life, acting as an ‘epistemic authority’ (Watson, 2018, p. 99) by regularly updating our daily connection to the world. The crucial discrepancy is that the mainstream media (newspapers, television, radio) as a cultural and social form have historically been tied to a nation-forming and nation-serving framework, wanting to speak both to and for a single national audience (or audiences). However, the world is no longer organised in this manner. The more complex the global political, economic, and cultural environment becomes, the more strenuously the mainstream media attempt to ensure their epistemic authority based on a national symbolic framework. Naturally, the authority of the mainstream media can only be ensured as long as their traditional business model remains viable. The problem is, what will follow if or when the epistemic authority of the mainstream media finally fails? The signs of a possible outcome are already apparent and far from promising.