Aaron Hyzen, Ph.D.
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Media, Inequality & Change Center
Aaron Hyzen’s research focuses on how ideology and knowledge circulate in society through mediated communication. Working at the intersection of communication studies, political economy and philosophy, he uses a mixed-methods approach to analyze political discourse and the technologies, structures and powerful interests that enable or constrain understanding.
Hyzen obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Antwerp. His doctoral dissertation, Propaganda in the 21st Century: Ideology, Truth and Power, focused on propaganda in typical (e.g., war, state propaganda, electioneering) and emerging cases (e.g., QAnon, anti-vax, flat earth), demonstrating the continued importance of propaganda as a form of strategic communication in contemporary political and social life. He emphasizes understanding the relationship between the digital affordances of Web 3.0 and aspects of the post-truth era like mis/disinformation and conspiracy theories, while recognizing the importance of accurate or “true” information as underappreciated component of propaganda campaigns. He further untangles the role of technology and ideology to overcome the conflation of medium and message to evaluate and clarify the current problematics of the digital age.
His Ph.D. work being dedicated to the analysis and identification of problems, he also engages in the search for solutions. His recent research in an interdisciplinary, inter-university project on algorithmic gatekeeping aims at understanding and providing policy recommendations regarding media related, algorithmic recommender systems and artificial intelligence. He focused on developing the novel concept of epistemic welfare, which refers to creating and maintaining the conditions and capabilities for epistemic agency in the public sphere. In line with notions of digital equity and inclusion, epistemic welfare seeks to treat structural, digital access to credible information and knowledge, as well as the improvement of citizens’ epistemic capabilities as part of societal welfare provisions, like for food, medicine, shelter, that help remove the uncertainty associated with need.