Social Knowledge Creation in the Humanities: Volume 2

Social media has transformed the ways new knowledge is understood to be created, validated, and reviewed in every academic field of study. Information flows through collaborative networks of people, and knowledge is now reviewed and disseminated online as often as not. In the humanities, Social Knowledge Creation has helped define how social media platforms and other collaborative spaces have shaped humanistic critique in the 21st century. The ability to access and organize information and people has been profoundly liberating in some contexts, but social media also holds many pitfalls and problems seen in often overlapping domains like politics, media studies, and online disinformation. While these countervailing influences are all around us, the essays collected in this volume represent a focused articulation of a humanistic ethics of generosity, compassion, and care. Social Knowledge Creation refreshingly returns to humanist values: People matter more than networks. Facts matter more than opinion. Ideas matter more than influence. As a result, the speed and scale of digital culture has challenged humanists from many disciplines to more clearly define the values of education, collaboration, and new knowledge in pursuit of human justice and equality. In short, online culture has presented a new opportunity to define how and why the humanities matter in the age of social media. 

Aaron Mauro is assistant professor of digital media at Brock University’s Centre for Digital Humanities. He teaches on topics relating to digital culture, natural language processing, and app development. He has published articles on US literature and culture that have appeared in Modern Fiction Studies, Mosaic, and Symploke, among others. He has also published on issues relating to digital humanities in Scholarly and Research Communication, Digital Studies, and Digital Humanities Quarterly. He is the author of Hacking in the Humanities: Cybersecurity, Speculative Fiction, and Navigating a Digital Future (Bloomsbury 2022).