Jialei Jiang (Composition and Applied Linguistics PhD alumna) and Matthew Vetter (faculty, Composition and Applied Linguistics PhD) recently published a chapter in an edited collection titled “The Epistemology of Deceit in a Postdigital Era: Dupery by Design,” which brings together cross-disciplinary examinations of the power of social media platforms and their role in the proliferation of epistemic harms.
“Writing Against the ‘Epistemology of Deceit’ on Wikipedia: A Feminist New Materialist Perspective Towards Critical Media Literacy” argues that a feminist, new materialist perspective provides a promising theoretical lens for understanding critical literacy learning through Wikipedia-based writing projects. Employing feminist new materialist theories of intra-action and lively assemblage, Jiang and Vetter examine how college students compose Wikipedia articles to address the encyclopedia’s systemic biases, especially those related to misrepresentation and uneven coverage of women and minorities. More specifically, the authors attend to how students work together to identify marginalized topics on Wikipedia, evaluate the coverage of multiple perspectives in these Wikipedia articles, analyze information gaps and biases, and contribute knowledge to the global Wikipedia community.
The Wikipedia-based writing project, featuring the entanglement of human agents and digital technologies, challenges students to create sociomaterial assemblages that entice bodies into collective actions against the proliferation of problematic information within and beyond the encyclopedia. The authors ultimately contend that feminist new materialist perspectives add new vigor to current theories and practices surrounding critical media literacy, and conclude the chapter by encouraging conscious use of the encyclopedia to more fully address the epistemic challenges of Wikipedia-based education.
The edited collection, titled The Epistemology of Deceit in a Postdigital Era: Dupery by Design, is edited by Alison MacKenzie, Jennifer Rose, and Ibrar Bhatt, and published by Springer as part of the Postdigital Science and Education book series.
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