Truth and Communication in the Age of Misinformation From Kierkegaard to Social Media
The Institute for International Communication, College of Professional Studies, St. John’s University, NY, USA and Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Italy presents the Truth and Communication in the Age of Misinformation from Kierkegaard to Social Media
In a tribute on the occasion of Soren Kierkegaard’s 200th birthday, Jeffery Frank writing for The New York Times, called him “rogue philosopher, great communicator.” By all accounts SK’s contribution to the field of the philosophy of communication is yet to be unfolded. His widely publicized quote stirs relevancy for our times:
“The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control.” (The Last Years: Journals 1853-5 quoted in Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels)
Although acknowledged primarily as philosopher of religion and ethics, Kierkegaard was also, equally significantly, a prescient scholar in communication theory – a field decades from emergence in his lifetime. Many of his principal contributions to human knowledge were very directly about the relationship between communication and truth.