Toward a systematic epistemology of the Web space
Description
The current project aims to contribute to the conceptual and theoretical foundation of a systematic epistemology of the Web space, by which to remain assimilable as social epistemology while reflecting the specificity of the epistemic medium and sources in discussion and the precise relationship of determination between the two fields from particular to general. In order to attain this aim, the research will adopt a bottom-up approach (reversed from the usual one in epistemology, from abstract to concrete), combined empirical and theoretical: It will pursue a conceptual-observational-categorical analysis of the Web space, focusing on taxonomies, case-studies, examples, epistemic kinds, and conceptual and epistemic structures present in the websites. The main principle is to investigate theoretically the main epistemic unit or product of the Web space, namely the website article or page, in its epistemic, linguistic, informational, structural, and intentional dimensions. The research project will consist of multiple research reports touching on the concepts employed and issues investigated, each report drawing further lines of research. A first goal in this project preceding the other theoretical research is to develop a clear epistemic taxonomy of the websites, based on what research has established as constituting knowledge in the online environment, its criteria of validation, and the means by which and the forms in which knowledge is delivered to the users. During the empirical-observational phase of the project, an ongoing quantitative and qualitative analysis will be conducted across the web, designed to cover, as uniformly as possible, various niches and categories of websites. The analysis aims to identify all forms of knowledge specific to websites and their particular modes of epistemic validation, as well as the relationships between the internet-specific (social-based) and the theoretical epistemic modes of validation.