Critical Reflection on the Reconfiguration of an Epistemic Filter as a Prerequisite for Social Work

Marketa Sedlakova, David Kosatka, Michal Cerny

Abstract
OBJECTIVES: The article seeks to answer the question: How do selected experts construct the discursive arena of the current epistemic filter concerning the technological and information acceleration of social interactions? The identified elements are reflected with regard to social phenomena in society and the possibilities of social work to respond to them. THEORETICAL BASE: The authors of the research discuss the risks associated with the epistemic filter fragment to cognition and knowledge construction in social work. METHODS: The answer to the research question results from a qualitative situation analysis, which included interviews with 13 experts dealing with technologies and their social consequences in various scientific disciplines. Situational optics also allowed us to observe critical nonhuman elements or intervening discourses that greatly complicate the current information and social space. OUTCOMES: The text provides an insight into the discursive arena of the epistemic filter, the re-conceptualization of which is a necessary prerequisite for harmonizing coexistence in a globalized and informationally fragmented world. A qualitative research study showed that the algorithmization of everyday life transforms our knowledge, the concept of time, the typification of social reality or the experience of oppression. SOCIAL WORK IMPLICATIONS: Social work must reflect new phenomena that arise as an often unintended consequence of technological progress.

Keywords
epistemic filter, information organisms, social media, social inequalities, algocracy

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