The theory of knowledge has a long history. Many famous philosophers, writers, scientists were arguing about this matter. The common main point is that knowledge presents a synthesis of perception and conception. People usually perceive something from the passing present moment. Perception is made through the sings provided by memory. As the result of perceptions we receive conceptions. They help to reveal the past and the future for the present. But these conceptions can not be absolutely true to life as they touch only our own experience and views and this way people are able to interpret only themselves for themselves. This is the easiest way and only the most unlearnt people choose it for themselves.


At any rate the defining of the knowledge is a rather controversial and difficult issue for study. The definition has to do with relations of knowledge and perception, knowledge and ignorance, facts and conceptual structures, direct and indirect knowledge and so on. Most of the researchers agree that knowledge has certain dimension, and people have more or less of it. William Ruckelshaus, former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator, supported this approach, if uneasily:15

“In confused situations one must try to be guided by basic principles. One of my basic principles is reflected in a quotation from Thomas Jefferson: “If we think [the people] not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.” Easy for him to say.” (1).

Facts are certainly as well connected with knowledge. Researches are arguing whether isolated facts are sufficient for making thoughts or conducting a discourse on some subject. Fact can be actually created by experts who use some hypothetical events for that, then the fact undergoes only their judgment and thus might have not enough evidence. Usually facts turn into commonly accepted beliefs.

We already mentioned the two types of knowledge – as direct and indirect one, the first one comes from personal experience and the second one comes from somebody else’s experience and is received with the help of media, mass networks, books and so on. It is hard to state here which one if more important, as talking for example about nuclear accidents, some people live near the regions where they took place and thus know about them, others do not live there and have the chance to get the information only from media. On the other hand we do not know for sure whether people living near Three Mile Island in the year 1979 experienced an accident or were aware of it thanks to media coverage of the events and to evacuation.

The only fact is certain – indirect knowledge and experience do differ in emotional power. When a person has the possibility to experience something he is able to produce the immediate emotional feedback

To make some conclusions about the notion of knowledge we would like to underline that knowledge is meaningful information. Meaning is not included into information, it reveals with the help of interpretation and analysis. The main way for the scientists to gather information is experiment of course, but this is not the only one. To gain knowledge they need to do surveys, build assumptions and theories. But the public receives not only the scientific knowledge, people get aware of economical, moral and political issues. Thus these three factors do influence the received information. Most of the scientific researches tend to be politically neutral as in most cases the funding of the scientific project or research comes from government. If a scientist shows some extreme interest in this or that political party he might lose the necessary financial support. But it doesn’t mean that the influence upon scientific knowledge is only negative. Probably the statement that pure knowledge is not possible is correct, it is still possible to change the facts, figures and theories in order to serve the society better.

In the famous work – Politics Among Nations by Morgenthaus we could find one of the best and precise descriptions of human nature. The author states that a real man should be a composite of “economic man, “political man”, “moral man” and “religious man”. It is hard not to support this point of view, as in reality if a persons lacks at least one of these “compounds” he lacks a part of his human nature. It is not possible to be a great or at least good politician without any moral concerns, it is not possible to become a successful businessman without the certain amount of knowledge concerning the political situation in the country and worldwide and so on. So, we come to the conclusion that every individual, if he wants to take his place in the developing society should be at least aware of politics. The main sources of getting the information about the political situation are the media. At the beginning the main role was played by newspapers, later on by television and radio and now there is another really important and versatile source – internet. The newest form of interaction in political environment are the so-called Web logs or blogs, at the moment there are not really many online journals who use them, but this from of presenting information and involving into communication shows rapidly developing positive results. Blogs are not simply a form of presenting political news, this is also a kind of people’s reaction and comments to the news.

Rather interesting in this connection seems the research of professors David Weaver and Dan Drew from IU School of Journalisms. They studied the past and present voters, and their knowledge of political situation and of political parties. The surveys were done both in presidential selection years and nonpresidential elections years. People were asked different questions, starting with the source of their information and ending with their attitudes towards different politicians. In the year 2004 this was the first time when internet was mentioned as a reliable source of such kind of information, this fact as well proves the development of interactivity even in politics. But still people, who watched television, were able to answer the questions more correctly.

People are free to have their own opinions concerning the political matters but those, who have little interest and thus little information about the political issues of the country are more vulnerable to be manipulated by the things that are told in political propaganda. Thus we again come to the conclusion that a person should have some basis of information to feel himself able to freely make his political choice. As an example of such situation we could use the example of Weaver concerning the elections in the year 2004. He states that: “In 2004 identification with the Republican Party had zero correlation with knowing about the issues, which suggests to me that a lot of people did not vote for George Bush on the basis of issue positions.”(1).

Another example is simple manipulation by images – “Let’s not vote for John Kerry because he was out sailing or because he owns a yacht”.

Overall, we should mention that there is no really an obligation for an individual to be politically aware and politically active – there is a necessity, as it is not possible to avoid the influence of politics on people, in order to be a valuable member of the society, in order to feel yourself protected from false propaganda, a person should possess the latest information about the current political matters.

Sources:

1. New Media, New Meaning?, Jennifer Piurek, 2005, pp. 1-4

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