Mediating Plureality: Technology, Perception, and Ethics in a Divided Democracy

In this book, Morten Bay provocatively questions whether or not truth in media is lost and, furthermore, whether humans can perceive objective reality or, as many neuroscientists and philosophers now believe, we all perceive different realities constructed through predictive processing. As affective polarization continues to render American democracy increasingly dysfunctional - a situation largely inflamed by media - Bay calls for a cultural shift in which these two conditions are reconciled. Drawing on political philosophy, this book presents an ethics that holds up responsible media conduct as a democratic duty of all media users. This shift in ethical frameworks carries with it different implications for a variety of audiences, including individuals, media platforms and corporations, media practitioners and journalists, media studies scholars, and society more broadly. Each stakeholder involved will need to reconsider their approach to media and reality - individuals must accept that everyone’s perceptions of reality are different; platforms and corporations must cease irresponsible practices that dissociate realities and stoke division; practitioners and journalists must develop more nuanced epistemologies beyond ’The Truth’, and scholars must redefine media by foregrounding epistemology, pluralism, and physicality in media theory. Collectively, Bay argues, we must come to a new understanding of reality as a plurality of realities - a plureality.

Morten Bay is lecturer in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.