ABSTRACT
There is a close interaction between the concepts of power, knowledge and discourse in human society. The philosophers Nietzsche, Derrida, Bourdieu, and Foucault discussed, each in their own way, the materialization of power in discourse. They argued that discourse is based on a logocentric hierarchy that has a center and margins, and that this logocentricity is closely associated with the construction of all of the concepts of absolute truth known to us. According to Foucault (1981), scientific discourse is no different from other forms of discourse, and is context-, time-, and place-dependent. States of illness and health have biological reality, but are measured by their social and cultural contexts. Nonetheless, human societies believe that the knowledge they have is reality itself. This misconception leads people, including experts, to think about the world and identify processes in certain terms, but at the same time it prevents them from noticing details or scientific theories that are inconsistent with the prevailing concepts. Foucault discusses the scientific theory of Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), known as the father of genetics, but who was rejected by the scientists of his time. What Mendel asserted was correct, but his scientific discovery did not fit “within the truth of the biological discourse” of his time (Foucault, 1981, p. 61). Therefore, Foucault distinguishes between “the physical world,” and its representation in the scientific theories that translate knowledge into concepts, which become accepted by the public. The acceptance of a theory normalizes the knowledge and makes it “natural.” Governmental institutions rule through the normalization of knowledge for the public. According to Foucault, the most effective power ever exercised in modern Western history to date was expressed precisely in the Western capitalist era, in the sense that power became more elusive and obscure than in totalitarian or communist regimes. The middle class gave rise to productive people who, unbeknownst to them, are actually the establishment’s agents of persuasion (Mills, 2003). In fact, the politicization of science has been immanent throughout the history of science. Barak Obama, speaking in his first term as President of the USA at the National Academy of Sciences, expressed the way governments use science to realize their interests. “We have
watched as scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicized in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas” (The White House, 2009). However, along with the forces trying to use science in the service of
economic and political interests, many other forces are trying to free science of those interests. These forces have even succeeded in establishing a wide scientific consensus on various issues, relying on cumulative studies conducted purely for the public’s benefit and health (Oreskes and Conway, 2011). In the technological Internet sphere, there have been many changes in the field of knowledge. Two essential changes are the death of exclusivity and the advent of social networks. The death of exclusivity means that knowledge ceased to be the exclusive property of the scientific and industrial communities alone. Many other players have entered the arena, including various subpopulations, who have turned into communities of knowledge in various ways, as discussed in other chapters of this book. The social networks that gave rise to numerous conversations between individuals and groups have created a decentralization and distribution of knowledge in the public sphere between health organizations and the public. Chapter 1 of this book, which discussed the public sphere and health com-
munication in the context of emergent infectious diseases, presented a framework (see Figure 1.1 in Chapter 1) of a new bifurcated social sphere. The framework emphasized that different elements overlap because communication does not have clear-cut limits: formal stakeholders are not at the center of this model, but rather encompass (and constitute part of) the public. Figure 1.1 illustrates the transformation of the public from recipient to equal partner. For health organizations to deal effectively with Internet decentralization and bifurcation before and after epidemics, they need to metaphorically embrace the public sphere and its collective memory without attempting to dictate to the public unilaterally. In order to turn that metaphoric embrace into practical directives for
health organizations in the virtual age, this chapter underlines the challenges in scientific discourse and possible solutions. Our rationale is that the virtual sphere cannot be approached before we discuss the way the organizations manage scientific discourse. The second part of this chapter presents the challenges of scientific discourse in the technological sphere and suggests possible directions.
