Today, a handful of multinational platform corporations dominate global markets in social media, cloud infrastructure, digital search, digital advertising, mobile operations, and digital messaging.

Opaque algorithms exacerbate the problem of access to trusted knowledge and increase social distrust.

How democracies and welfare states respond to the challenges depends on their epistemic capacity: citizens’ ability to access reliable information and their right to participate in knowledge production and be recognized in public discussion.

It also refers to the epistemic authority and accountability of key democratic institutions and their ability to provide legitimate, shared knowledge that serves decision-making and supports policy choices.

This demands new insights on how datafied media systems and infrastructures intersect with existing societal and epistemic risks and vulnerabilities and the options and obstacles for effective policy.

In October 2024, the Epistemic Challenges and Democratic Accountability in European Media conference brought together an interdisciplinary community of scholars and experts to assess the current challenges: new conditions of knowledge production, the responsibility of digital platforms, and the intersection of inequalities and technologies in a datafied and polarized communication landscape.

This two-part podcast series highlights the key insights from the four distinguished keynote speakers of the conference.

Guests in the Episode 1:
Prof. Hilde van den Bulck (Drexel University) and
Associate Prof. Mike Ananny (University of Southern California)

Guests in the Episode 2:
Prof. Eugenia Siapera (University College Dublin) and
Prof. Tarlach McGonagle (University of Amsterdam)

The podcasts are hosted by consultant, speaker and podcaster Yann Ilunga.