Epistemic Injustice in Online Communities: Unpacking the Values of Knowledge Creation and Curation within CSCW Applications

Information flows are pervasive on the internet and often have a low entry barrier. From an epistemological perspective, information evolves into knowledge. For example, information about mental health on TikTok can act as actionable knowledge for someone seeking to improve their mental health. However, social computing has long known that people do not interact with knowledge cleanly, especially in digital environments. While knowledge curation is essential for targeting irrelevant, biased, or even harmful information, it is value-laden; in choosing how to present information, we undermine non-traditional information such as personal experiences. In this workshop, we will bring together researchers from academia, industry, and marginalized communities to discuss how current CSCW applications contribute to the systemic silencing, exclusion, or delegitimization of certain knowledge contributions (i.e., epistemic injustice). We will diagram our own mental models of how knowledge is created and curated and reflect on critical questions to orient the design of inclusive knowledge spaces online, particularly with topics that blend personal experience with factual information, such as mental health.