Ignorance and Transparency in the Era of Socio-digital Distruption

The Neoliberal economic regime and market-based knowledge production, combined with digitalization and the rise of social media have shaken the former authority of institutional knowledge and expertise in various professions. One of the epistemological paradoxes related to data driven societies is that knowledge and non-knowing as well as information and disinformation increase in equal amounts. For instance, algorithms and machine learning make people and democratic public discussion vulnerable to various filter bubbles in social media and automated inequality created by the predictive analytics of automated decision-making.

This interdisciplinary workshop invites empirical and theoretical papers that address various aspects of expertise, professions and institutional knowledge related to issues of non-knowledge, ignorance and disinformation. Specifically, we welcome research papers that are related to discussions in ignorance studies and social epistemology, sociology of knowledge, science studies, feministic epistemology, organization studies, working life studies, political science, and media studies. The contributions may address, but not be limited to, one or more of the following questions:

· While digitalization opens new opportunities from medicine to manufacturing, new technologies raise key questions and uncertainties for the future. How does automated decision-making challenge professionals’ work and their education systems?

· How do professionals and institutions tackle the spread of more or less manufactured disinformation and bullying by various agents complicating public discussion and functioning of democracy?

· Regarding the transparency and accountability of data collection and algorithms, how do consumers and citizens control and possess their personal data?

· In addition to knowledge management, do organizations and institutions need to take into consideration also ‘ignorance management’?

The workshop will open with a keynote lecture "Ignorance and Transparency: How are they Related?" by professor and sociologist Matthias Gross (Helmholtz Centre in Leipzig and University of Jena, Germany). Professor Gross is a leading expert in the sociology of ignorance, and he has published the book Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies (2015).