Information Saturation and Manufactured Risk

• In Event: How Do They Understand the Science? Communicating Science, Risks, and Disasters 2

Abstract

The transition to modernity in Europe was complex and multifaceted, and has received the attention of many scholars, including Weber and Habermas, both of whom have characterized the emergence of modernism as "the path to rationalization." The "institutionalization of purposive-rational economic and administrative action" (Habermas 1987), had, at is foundations, new kinds of understanding of the world, and required new sources of information and evidence, not only for the development of scientific knowledge, but for the modeling and control of the world by the administrative state.

While certainly reductive, one way to understand the transition from pre-modernity to modernity is in the development and communication of reliable sources of information for understanding the world. By the end of the 19th century in the United States, the proliferation of information required the development of the modern research university and the modern library.

Recent political events in the U.S. and in other western democracies has pointed to a new problem: the proliferation of information has not necessarily led to wider understanding, but is also an opportunity to reap confusion by sowing misinformation, whether the misinformation is authentic error or a deliberate attempt to deceive. Bad actors have realized political gain through transnational disinformation campaigns (such as Russia's interference in various elections) and manufactured risk. Global risks, for example terrorism and climate change, require international cooperation, but these efforts are undermined by diversionary information. This paper will characterize information saturation as a possible point of inflection from modernity to postmodernity.

Author

• Gregory Leazer, UCLA Dept of Information Studies