When the platform is the public square
From Southeast Asia·An enduring case
In several Southeast Asian countries, a single social platform effectively is the internet for much of the population, and investigations after episodes of violence found incendiary rumours had circulated with little moderation in local languages. The infrastructure of knowing was owned abroad and staffed thin.
The concepts this raises
Each of these gives a class a different way into the same case.
- EvidenceGrounds of Knowledge
- What is offered in support of a claim. Evidence is not the same as proof: it raises or lowers how likely a claim is, and its force depends on how it was gathered, what it was gathered for, and what else it is consistent with. Asking what would count as evidence against a claim is usually more revealing than listing evidence for it.
- ResponsibilityKnowledge and Society
- What a knower owes as a result of knowing, or of being in a position to know. It covers obligations in producing knowledge, in passing it on accurately, and in acting or refusing to act on it, including the responsibility taken on by choosing not to look.
Where it sits in the knowledge framework
- Ethics
- The ethical questions internal to the knowledge itself: what may be investigated and how, what obligations the knowledge places on those who hold it, and the ethical constraints the discipline imposes on its own practitioners.
Areas of knowledge
Themes
The same ideas, somewhere else
Cases that raise a concept this one raises, but in a different area of knowledge or a different part of the world. That contrast is the point: it is what shows a student the concept travels.
- Africa
When a government doubted the virus
South Africa's government under Mbeki gave platform to AIDS-dissident scientists and delayed antiretroviral rollout, and later epidemiological studies…
Enduring · The natural sciences
- Evidence
- Power
- Responsibility
- India
Counting Bhopal's victims
Official, judicial and activist counts of deaths from the 1984 gas leak differ by tens of thousands, diverging on time windows, causation standards and whose…
Enduring · The human sciences · The natural sciences
- Evidence
- Power
- Responsibility
- Latin America
Bones as witnesses
Forensic teams exhuming mass graves in Guatemala and Argentina matched skeletal evidence to survivor accounts, converting disputed atrocities into documented…
Enduring · History · The natural sciences
- Evidence
- Responsibility
- The Middle East and North Africa
Measuring heat where people must work
Gulf states ban outdoor work during set summer hours, defined by clock and calendar rather than by measured heat stress on given sites, while researchers argue…
Current · The human sciences · The natural sciences
- Evidence
- Responsibility
- South Asia
A nationwide experiment with no pilot
In 2021 Sri Lanka banned synthetic fertiliser imports almost overnight, aiming for fully organic agriculture; harvests collapsed and the decision was reversed…
Enduring · The human sciences · The natural sciences
- Evidence
- Responsibility
- India
A billion identities in one database
Aadhaar links welfare, banking and identity to biometric records for over a billion people, and when a fingerprint fails to match or a record misfires, the…
Current · The human sciences
- Power
- Responsibility