Enacting Epistemic Agency in Transnational Space: YouTube Comments on Face Masks During COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Media Literacy in a Time of Crisis

Abstract

During a time of uncertainty and crisis, people need epistemic agency to cautiously examine the trustworthiness of information appearing online to form their positions and arguments. This study seeks to explore epistemic agency manifest in YouTube comments generated during the period of health experts dissensus about wearing masks against the spread of coronavirus. Drawing on qualitative content analysis of the selected comments, findings report on how commenters enacted epistemic agency for constructing and critiquing arguments in complementary and contested ways, and how some commenters drew their epistemic agency on knowledge and norms from their lived lives. A paradigmatic shift in Post-pandemic education was discussed with the vision of people acting with epistemic agency in transnational social medial space.

Author

• Won Jung Kim, Santa Clara University