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Fake News and Partisan Epistemology
Regina Rini wrote "Fake News and Partisan Epistemology." Her work focuses primarily on microaggressions, partisanship in political epistemology, and the moral status of artificial intelligence.

In this paper, Rini makes four points about the fake news and partisan epistemology. First, Rini gives an analysis on the concept of fake news. Second, identifying the epistemic features of news transmissions through social media. Third, Rini argues that partisanship in testimony can be individually reasonable and consistent with epistemic virtue even though it can generate false beliefs. Fourth, people should view the harms of partisan epistemology not as an individual problem but as an institutional problem instead. Since its publication, Rini’s philosophical analysis of fake news and partisan epistemology has been analyzed and criticized by academics.

History
Rini published the paper “Fake News and Partisan Epistemology” in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (Volume 27, Number 2 Supplement), a quarterly academic journal published by Johns Hopkins University Press, in June 2017. This paper came following the contentious 2016 United States presidential election in which fake news and its spread played a role in the outcome.

Definition of Fake News
To begin her paper, Rini starts by defining what fake news is and what the different types are. She starts by stating fake news requires intentional deception. This deception is intended to create a larger audience than the initial audience. Basically, fake news is meant to be shared and re-shared and in doing so a hub is formed around the content that is being shared. Many often associate fake news with the goal of spreading false information. While spreading false information is sometimes not the only goal, deception does play some role in all cases of fake news. In addition, while deception occurs, sometimes it is not necessarily the primary motive. Oftentimes businesses have financial motives that outweigh their epistemic motives. In other words, businesses might not care if people end up believing the fake news they produce, as long as the clicks keep coming, therefore increasing their income. On the other hand, sometimes fake news creators do intend to actually deceive as many people as possible. Rini refers to this as ‘pure’ fake news. This implies there is an ‘impure' form of fake news, which Rini describes as a “deception-as-instrument” form of fake news mainly motivated by financial gain. These are the two different types of fake news outlined in this paper. Ultimately, Rini defines fake news as the following, “A fake news story is one that purports to describe events in the real world, typically by mimicking the conventions of traditional media reportage, yet is known by its creators to be significantly false, and is transmitted with the two goals of being widely re-transmitted and of deceiving at least some of its audience”. Rini’s definition of fake news notably omits how fake news is transmitted. There are many ways fake news can be spread; she gives suggestions such as social media platforms, email chains, or even posters. However, specifically Rini notes a strong contingent relationship between fake news and social media, and discusses this focus further in the following sections of her paper.

Epistemic Features of Online Testimony
Rini highlights epistemic features of online testimony. Many stories and posts on social media are believed because they are presented as a testimony. Testimonies in general are believed because communities rely heavily on others for the accumulation of news and information. This practice is epistemically virtuous, as it is more efficient for a group to collectively share information with one another than for one individual to research all of their believes themselves. Online, we have unstable norms concerning our evaluation of testimony. Testimonies are presented as coming from another person, however when someone re-shares a post on social media, it is unclear whether or not the person is re-sharing it as a testimony or not. Rini asks the questions: “Is a retweet an endorsement?” and “When you post a news link to Facebook without comment, are you vouching for its truth?” These questions highlight the blurred lines between what is and is not testimony in online environments. Our skewed and disputed norms concerning testimony online override our natural skepticism that we use to evaluate testimony in real life. Rini believes that these traits of online testimony are what causes fake news to be especially effective online.

The (Individual) Epistemic Virtue of Partisanship
The main goal Rini hopes to prove is in this section. She concludes that partisanship allows the epistemic practices involved in sharing fake news to sometimes be epistemically virtuous and reasonable in political domains. Rini explains this idea by explaining that partisanship in testimony reception is virtuous, at least when it comes to the reception of normative claims. Rini explores this idea by explaining that partisanship in testimony reception makes sense, at least when it comes to the reception of politically normative claims. Rini explains that co-partisans have similar values and agree on normative claims, so it’s reasonable to be more receptive to the testimonies of your co-partisans. She says that this virtuousness would sometimes hold when it comes to fake news, which deals with descriptive claims. This is because fake news and any news for that matter involve normative claims about what is and what is not important to focus on. Rini cites news that deals with characterological evidence as an apt example. Deciding what characterological evidence to provide when assessing a political candidate involves normative decisions about what traits are important to focus on. Thus, according to Rini, it is reasonable to believe a testifier of your political affiliation when receiving news you think to be true but is not (fake news). The act of sharing fake news (which usually has political implications) is then sometimes reasonable because it’s closely tied with this partisanship-in-testimony reception.

Institutions for Accountability
Last, Rini suggests solutions to stop the spread of fake news, noting that the focus should be on institutions. Earlier, she explained how the unstable norms of social media testimony cause the spread of fake news. So, it is necessary to establish the norm that re-sharing content is endorsing it. She calls this a “norm of accountability.” If someone re-shares false content, they should be held accountable, as someone who spreads false rumors would be.

The responsibility to start this norm must be offloaded onto institutions. Sustaining this norm requires keeping track of who shared what content to hold users accountable. Individuals cannot track down all information and trace the sources, so the responsibility must be on institutions. Rini proposes a way for institutions to accomplish this norm of accountability. She suggests that social media platforms calculate a ‘Reputation Score’ for each user based on how often they spread fake news. The scores would be published on a person’s profile. This solution does not censor users, but it allows people to identify users who share fake news often. One danger of this solution is that it sets a precedent for ranking social media users– a practice many dystopias, including the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive” and the novel Super Sad True Love Story, warn against. Rini acknowledges that there will be better solutions, but she wants to emphasize that institutions are responsible. Proposals should not focus on solving individual partisanship, because as she laid out, that is often reasonable.