Warranted assertibility and the Internet: A theoretical model for an online proto-research community

Abstract

In this paper, we suggest that research platforms on the present Internet should offer more diverse pathways for distributed communication, to cope with the idiosyncrasies of a post-truth society. Present platforms adhere to a first-order cybernetic approach, using rule-based systems and algorithms to guide the activity of researchers, and expose them to new research findings and articles based on their preferences. The larger Internet, however, supports communities such as Reddit, that offer opportunities for pragmatic problem-solving that mirrors the ideas of second- order cybernetics, but show much potential for incivility. We first test this assumption using 704 comments responding to 25 top posts pulled from the CoronavirusUS subreddit, using a Python script. Our analyses indicate that a substantial percentage of posts in the subreddit display higher-order reflectivity (what we label transformative critical reflection) which predicts the number of upvotes received by these posts. We also found that karma, or user reputation, is not predicted by interaction between high-order reflectivity and upvotes. This suggests that posts are gauged by quality rather than users’ reputations. From these results, we infer that such communication can be mirrored in online proto-research communities, and streamlined by laying down regulations, appointing moderators, and using algorithms to guide distributed communication, and combat the propensity for chaos arising from emancipation. We lay out our design/vision for such a community, based on a dual-layered reformulation of the Open Source Educative Processes framework.