The epistemology of the Internet as interdisciplinary field
The epistemology of the Internet studies what is the nature of knowledge provided by the Internet and how the Internet, through its specific human-driven electronic entities (websites, search engines, groups, forums, posts, online communications, etc.), created, developed, and working under specific conditions (social media interaction, exploitation of big data, anonymity, etc.) affects knowledge. This includes how knowledge is produced, transmitted, evaluated, and trusted in online environments (Floridi, 2010, 2011; Lynch, 2016).
Obviously, this field intersects social epistemology, which deals with knowledge in social contexts, virtue epistemology, dealing with the degrees in which the agents’ intellectual character matters for validating information as knowledge, and ethics, dealing with the norms of producing the various kinds of knowledge and the moral aspects of make it public and available for the users (Goldman, 1999; Frost-Arnold, 2023). Other non-philosophical disciplines are involved and contribute to the epistemology of the Internet. It is about information science, communications science, and technology science (Goldman & Whitcombe, 2011); Heersmink, 2018; Spence, 2009). Such disciplines account for both the nature and specificity of the Internet knowledge, especially the way it is produced and communicated, and how it is different for the traditional on-paper published knowledge. Involvement and contributions are expected to come also from other disciplines in the future, as the Internet evolves technologically and socially at a high rate.
Major thematic areas, key theoretical points, and challenges
Research in the epistemology of the Internet addressed themes related to the specific features of the information delivered in the Web space, including in what concerns the technological processes of delivery. The thematic areas that received the most attention are itemized in what follows, outlining the major problems and debates that emerged with the research:
Search engines, information-seeking, and credibility. In general, virtue epistemology has been applied to how we ought to use the Internet in epistemically good ways - patience, attentiveness, intellectual humility, etc. (Heersmink, 2018). The concept of ‘default trust’ has been advanced in relation to personalization, algorithmic bias, and filter bubbles, in which users may not see dissenting or diverse views (Bartsch et al., 2025). However, both the nature and role of default trust is ambiguous. There is tension between usability/convenience and epistemic standards (supposed to transcend the Internet as a medium), which has not been regimented in theory.
Trust, authority, credibility. Trust and knowledge are fundamentally entwined in online contexts, but what counts as authority or credible can vary and be manipulated (Rini, 2017; Wang & Emurian, 2005). Some work proposes formal models for evaluating web sources (Dong et al., 2015; Rowley and Johnson, 2013), but foundational questions remained unanswered: How to define credible authority? How to deal with anonymity and pseudonymity? How to account theoretically for the risk of “authority bias”?
Epistemic virtues, agent epistemology. In general, it is argued that how agents use the Internet – including intellectual virtues – is crucial for epistemic reliability (Baehr, 2011; Heersmink, 2018). But there is tension in this argument, as not everyone has equal capability or training. Also, virtues may conflict (e.g., breadth vs. carefulness), while environment and platform structures can hinder or distort virtues (e.g., incentives for sensational content). Moreover, how to integrate virtue cultivation in education or platform design is underexplored. Overall, the question arises as whether such direction of accounting for the users’ capabilities (of a strong social nature) is not replacing the Internet (the main object of investigation) from the spotlight of the research within virtue epistemology.
Epistemic risks: misinformation, overload, echo chambers. Big Data and social media amplify speed over depth (Boyd & Crawford, 2012). The choices of what to show/hide, algorithmic selection, popularity contests, virality, etc., can distort epistemic communities. The Web space is overloaded with information and hence the heuristics approach dominates. Echo chambers and filter bubbles potentially reduce exposure to conflicting views and nuanced information (Nguyen, 2020). Attempts to moderate content run into issues of censorship, bias, free expression, and platform power. Distinguishing misinformation versus disinformation (intent) is difficult (Floridi, 2011). The question arises as to what epistemic standards apply in different domains (everyday life versus scientific) and how to account for the social dimension of these standards (originating in the social purpose of preventing harms for the users) in a systematic epistemology of the Internet.
Epistemic injustice, feminist, postcolonial and situated knowledge. Since the online environment is not neutral, it inherits and can amplify social inequalities. Marginalized voices may be silenced, dismissed, or stereotyped. Fricker (2007) distinguishes between testimonial injustice (where someone’s testimony is undervalued because of prejudice) and hermeneutical injustice. Feminist epistemology, standpoint theory, epistemologies of ignorance, and epistemic injustice are addressed when analyzing online knowing, raising the question of how can we approach theoretically concepts like “whose knowledge counts” and regimentation projects like “decolonizing Internet knowledge” (Pohlhaus, 2017). Anonymity complicates traditional frameworks of epistemic injustice and undermines attempts to remediate injustice in large networked platforms (Origgi & Ciranna, 2017). Another issue is that efforts to “correct” injustice may impose other biases (Fricker, 2007).
Ontology and methodology of Big Data. Collection, filtering, and use of massive datasets raise questions about representation, validity, bias, quantification versus interpretation (Boyd & Crawford, 2012). Such questions have both a statistical nature and an ethical-epistemological one. Resnyansky (2019) critiques over-reliance on quantitative data, advocating for integrating social scientific theory in the epistemological account of Big Data. From an epistemological perspective, there are tensions between quantitative and qualitative, the danger of treating data as neutral, and the issue of “data universalism”. And since platforms act as producers of data and controllers of data access, power issues are also raised (Törnberg & Törnberg, 2018).
Anonymity, identity, and online agency. Anonymity/pseudonymity changes how we perceive knowledge, trust, and authority. In addition, identity cues affect reception of testimony. Fricker-inspired frameworks explore how anonymity and identity in digital spaces complicate power relations in testimony and credibility (Origgi & Ciranna, 2017). A theory of Internet-like anonymized knowledge should tell how to balance privacy/anonymity versus accountability, including how to distinguish sincere pseudonyms from deceit. A factual issue to be reflected in any theoretical account of this knowledge is that there is cultural variation in how identity is tied to credibility (Bartsch et al., 2025).
Content moderation, platform power and epistemic governance. Online platforms are the Internet key gatekeepers: their ranking algorithms, moderation policies, and community norms decide what is visible and to what degree (Rowley & Johnson, 2013; McDowell, 2002). The major question of epistemic authority relative to the platforms is who decides what content is moderated and what counts as harmful or false, as well as how that authority should do that, not mentioning the cross-jurisdiction issues (Petit, 2006; Alaimo & Kallinikos, 2017; Rowell & Call-Cummings, 2020; Zuckerman, 2021).
Virtue, norms, ethics, and educational implications. Researchers agreed that to navigate the Web well and safely, we need norms, virtues, and skills, such as critical thinking, epistemic humility, and skepticism. As platform designs often do not reward virtue, educational systems should integrate training in evaluating sources, recognizing bias, and corroboration in online environments. Spence (2009) emphasizes that online information carries both epistemic and ethical obligations for its producers, disseminators, and users. However, it is difficult to adopt standards sensitive to context and culture (Brady & Fricker, 2019). Moreover, norms may conflict to each other (openness versus privacy, free speech versus preventing harm, for instance) (Turilli & Floridi, 2009). Educating large populations is challenging and brings a new social dimension to a complete account of the epistemology of the Internet, originating in the educational nature of the Internet.
Beside the tensions and open problems originating in the above thematic areas of research, I would add the adaptation to future technologies: Technology advances with high acceleration on the Internet. AI, generative models, and automation already raised questions about bias, hallucination, and erasure of non-dominant epistemologies. A foundational question arises for a theory of epistemology of the Internet: How can such theory be developed and crystallized, as long as it should always adapt to the new technology? A solution to this problem should transcend the nature of the means by which information and knowledge is delivered online and should depend on the information itself and its nature. However, technology is part of the nature of the Internet.
Conclusion and further foundational research
The epistemology of the Internet is a rich, rapidly growing field extending classical concerns of justification, knowledge, authority, and trust into Web-mediated contexts. Strengths include combining empirical research and case studies with normative reflection, attention to social and power dimensions, and recognition that technology mediates knowledge. Challenges remain in balancing rigorous epistemic ideals with real-world constraints, managing platform power and opacity, ensuring fairness and justice, and integrating diverse epistemic cultures.
Research in this field is far from crystallizing a systematic theory of the epistemology of the Internet. The attribute of systematic is justified by the aim of integrating this theory in the traditional epistemology and establishing the precise relationships of this prospected theory with the more general social epistemology, by employing the specificity of the Internet knowledge.
As expected, the research was focused on the social dimension of Internet, given that practical targets of a social-ethical nature emerged with the development of the Internet. However, this focus detours the path toward a systematic epistemology of the Internet, just because the epistemic units or products specific to the web space (websites, search engines, groups, forums, posts, online communications, etc.) are those delivering and processing knowledge for the users through the Internet interface. In traditional (general) epistemology, the orthodoxy definition of knowledge as “justified true belief” is only relative to the content of the belief itself, which is subject to testing for justification and truth, even though the epistemic agents or agencies are part of the process of delivering it. Actually, the social dimension of knowledge in traditional epistemology only concerns (in a weak mode) the epistemic agents and less the ‘users’ of knowledge, who always exist in whatever medium. In the reviewed research, a great emphasis is put on the social and ethical aspects of the acquisition of information and knowledge of the Internet users and less on what counts as knowledge in this medium.
Obviously, there is a wide interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary framework getting contoured with the analysis of the Internet knowledge from the providers’ and users’ perspective. But epistemology itself is not that interdisciplinary – it calls for other philosophical fields and at most cognition sciences but not beyond in the society. Prospecting for standards and norms to avoid Internet-specific harms and optimize users’ experience is a merely social aim and many disciplines are welcome and able to contribute. However, for a systematic theory of the Internet knowledge which to integrate in the traditional epistemology and distinguish from social epistemology, in this stage first foundational theoretical research is needed, centered on a metatheoretical reflection on what counts as “knowledge” in online settings. Theoretical research should investigate the epistemic products of the Internet in a social-free (but not epistemic-agents-free) conceptual framework and establish their place and specificity in a clear taxonomy of “published knowledge”, which will include traditional on-paper information as knowledge (books, press, courses, etc.). This direction also assumes as a prerequisite establishing precisely the distinction between information and knowledge in online setting and adopting a methodology specific to analytical philosophy.
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