EPISTEMIC INJUSTICE: AN EPIPHENOMENON OF ADVERTISING COMMUNICATION
Zh. E. Vavilova
Kazan State Power Engineering University, Kazan, Russia
е-mail: zhannavavilova@mail.ru
Abstract. Advertising as a simulacrum, an artifact of modern mythologized society has for a while been in the focus of philosophical research, but the phenomenon of epistemic injustice generated by advertising communication still requires reflection. The article reveals the role of advertising mechanisms in forming epistemic injustice in modern social landscape; the relationship between trust in advertising, its reliability and the development of epistemic virtue among the participants in the communication process is determined; the classical typology of epistemic injustice put forward by M. Fricker is further elaborated. The author comes to the conclusion that modern advertising generates a special type of epistemic injustice, affecting both the recipient of the message, who is always potentially deceived when in contact with advertising, and the informant, who suffers from identity prejudices and related testimonial injustice. The problem of the epistemological status of advertising becomes one of the epistemic virtue of the consumer, who must be able to correctly assess the context and take responsibility for the economic choice, since advertising as a communicative phenomenon a priori has the right to distort reality for the sake of survival of one of the elements of the business system and consumption in society as a whole. Current legislation which is designed to promote the rights of citizens to receive reliable information about products or services, does not guarantee the truth of advertising claims, as it is aimed at maintaining the dominant discourse, just like advertising. The way out of the situation of epistemic injustice seems to be switching from the experience of consuming advertising messages to the experience of consuming the product itself, cultivating acquired epistemic virtue and introducing a non-institutionalized form of social control that involves monitoring in order to detect false advertising and disseminating this information in the communicative space of the society of the post-knowledge era.
Key words: epistemology, epistemic injustice, epistemic virtue, Gettier problem, advertising, communication, creative technologies, hyperbole.
Cite as: Vavilova, Zh. E. (2023) [Epistemic injustice: an epiphenomenon of advertising communication]. Intellekt. Innovacii. Investicii [Intellect. Innovations. Investments]. Vol. 1, pp. 45–54, https://doi.org/10.25198/2077-7175-2023-1-45.
