Applied Epistemology, Information Overload, and Fake News: Artificial Intelligence, Public Trust, and Democracy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21142/DES-1803-2026-e0071Keywords:
Epistemology, Information overload, fake news, artificial intelligence, digital literacyAbstract
The digital era has transformed the dynamics of knowledge, democratizing access to information while simultaneously increasing the risks of information overload, disinformation, and fake news. These phenomena undermine scientific reliability and the critical autonomy of citizens, particularly given the ambivalent role of artificial intelligence, which is capable of both generating and detecting misinformation. The aim of this essay is to examine the main epistemological challenges of digital society through a critical review of classical and contemporary literature. The methodology consisted of a theoretical and reflective analysis grounded in indexed academic sources. The results identify the crisis of truth, informational saturation, and the ethical and technological dilemmas of artificial intelligence. In conclusion, this study emphasizes the need for an applied epistemology that integrates tools such as CRAV/CRAAP, while also highlighting digital and media literacy as fundamental strategies to restore public trust, safeguard scientific knowledge, and promote a critical citizenry.
Downloads
References
Bunge, M. (1983). La investigación científica. Su estrategia y su filosofía. Ariel. https://goo.su/ZZU8
Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society. Blackwell. https://books.google.com.pe/books?id=FihjywtjTdUC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Chesney, R. y Citron, D. K. (2019). Deep fakes: A looming challenge for privacy, democracy, and national security. California Law Review, 107, 1753. https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/640
Corzo-Zavaleta, J., Navarro-Castillo, Y. y Ugaz-Rivero, M. (2025). Uso de la inteligencia artificial en la educación universitaria: exploración bibliométrica. Desde el Sur, 17(1), e0010. https://doi.org/10.21142/DES-1701-2025-0010
Cotter, K., DeCook, J. R. y Kanthawala, S. (2022). Fact-checking the crisis: COVID-19, infodemics, and the platformization of truth. Social Media + Society, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211069048
Day, R. A. (1998). How to write and publish a scientific paper (5.ª ed.). Oryx Press.
Eames, E. R. (1969). Bertrand Russell’s theory of knowledge. Allen & Unwin. https://ia801501.us.archive.org/12/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.124120/2015.124120.Bertrand-Russells-Theory-Of-Knowledge_text.pdf
Espinoza Guanilo, A. (2024). Periodismo en tiempos de posverdad y desinformación. Analizando el trabajo de los periodistas para plataformas digitales de El Comercio y RPP. Desde el Sur, 16(2), e0032. https://doi.org/10.21142/DES-1602-2024-0032
Feyerabend, P. (1993). Contra el método. Verso.
Floridi, L. (2014). The Fourth Revolution. How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality. Oxford University Press. https://issc.al.uw.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Luciano-Floridi-The-Fourth-Revolution_-How-the-infosphere-is-reshaping-human-reality-Oxford-University-Press-2014.pdf
Floridi, L. y Cowls, J. (2019). A unified framework of five principles for AI in society. Harvard Data Science Review, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.8cd550d1
Freiling, I. (2019). Detecting misinformation in online social networks: A think-aloud study on user strategies. Studies in Communication and Media, 8(4), 471-496. https://doi.org/10.5771/2192-4007-2019-4-471
Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. Pantheon. (Obra original publicada en 1969). https://dn790008.ca.archive.org/0/items/the_archeology_of_knowledge/the_archeology_of_knowledge.pdf
Habermas, J. (1991). The structural transformation of the public sphere. An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. MIT Press. https://arditiesp.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/habermas_structural_transf_public_sphere.pdf
Herrero-Diz, P., Conde-Jiménez, J., Tapia-Frade, A., & Varona-Aramburu, D. (2019). The credibility of online news: An evaluation of the information by university students / La credibilidad de las noticias en Internet: una evaluación de la información por estudiantes universitarios. Culture and Education, 31(2), 407-435. https://doi.org/10.1080/11356405.2019.1601937
Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(46), 16569-16572. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0507655102
Jaeger-McEnroe, E. (2025). Rethinking Authority and Bias: Modifying the CRAAP Test to Promote Critical Thinking about Marginalized Information. College & Research Libraries News, 86(1), 12. https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.86.1.12
Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The priority of paradigms. En The structure of scientific revolutions (pp. 44-51). University of Chicago Press. https://www.lri.fr/~mbl/Stanford/CS477/papers/Kuhn-SSR-2ndEd.pdf
Lakatos, I. (1978). The methodology of scientific research programmes. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511621123
Lazer, D. M. J., Baum, M. A., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A. J., Greenhill, K. M., Menczer, F. y Zittrain, J. L. (2018). The science of fake news. Science, 359(6380), 1094-1096. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aao2998
Leite, J. A., Razuvayevskaya, O., Bontcheva, K. y Scarton, C. (2025). Weakly supervised veracity classification with LLM-predicted credibility signals. EPJ Data Science, 14(1), 534. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-025-00534-0
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H. y Cook, J. (2017). Beyond misinformation: Understanding and coping with the «post-truth» era. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(4), 353-369. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.07.008
Lorenz-Spreen, P., Mønsted, B. M., Hövel, P. y Lehmann, S. (2019). Accelerating dynamics of collective attention. Nature Communications, 10, 1759. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09311-w
Lozano, M., Brynielsson, J., Franke, U., Rosell, M., Tjörnhammar, E., Varga, S. y Vlassov, V. (2020). Veracity assessment of online data. Decision Support Systems, 129, 113132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2019.113132
Martin, A. (2022). Reseña: Byung-Chul Han. Infocracia: la digitalización y la crisis de la democracia. Revista de Filosofía, 79. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0718-43602022000100209
Muis, K. R., Denton, C. A. y Dubé, A. K. (2022). Identifying CRAAP on the Internet: A source evaluation intervention. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(7), 239-265. https://doi.org/10.14738/assrj.97.12670
Peter, C. y Koch, T. (2019). Countering misinformation: Strategies, challenges, and uncertainties. Studies in Communication and Media, 8(4), 431-445. https://doi.org/10.5771/2192-4007-2019-4-431
Popper, K. R. (1959). The logic of scientific discovery. Hutchinson & Co. https://philotextes.info/spip/IMG/pdf/popper-logic-scientific-discovery.pdf
Prinzing, M. y Vazquez, M. (2025). Studying philosophy does make people better thinkers. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 11(4), 640-658. https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2025.10007
Pérez, H. N. (2024). Chul Han, B. (2022): Infocracia: la digitalización y la crisis de la democracia, Berlín, Taurus, 112 pp. [Reseña]. Política y Sociedad, 61(1), e88546. https://dx.doi.org/10.5209/poso.88546
Schaewitz, L., & Krämer, N. C. (2020). Combating disinformation: Effects of timing and correction format on factual knowledge and personal beliefs. En M. van Duijn, M. Preuss, V. Spaiser, F. Takes, & S. Verberne (Eds.), Disinformation in Open Online Media (pp. 233-245). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61841-4_16
Sunstein, C. R. (2006). Infotopia. How many minds produce knowledge. Oxford University Press.
Sunstein, C. R. (2009). On rumors. How falsehoods spread, why we believe them, and what can be done. Princeton University Press.
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D. y Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146-1151. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9559
Wardle, C. y Derakhshan, H. (2017). Information disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making. Council of Europe report DGI(2017)09. https://www.coe.int/en/web/council-of-europe/information-disorder
Zellers, R., Holtzman, A., Rashkin, H., Bisk, Y., Farhadi, A., Roesner, F. y Choi, Y. (2019). Defending against neural fake news. arXiv preprint, arXiv:1905.12616. https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.12616
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Esta obra está bajo una licencia http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
