Avoidance and Trust in Political Deliberation

Much public political deliberation now takes place online. Elsewhere I’ve argued that a condition on productive online deliberation is ‘epistemic respite’, or space away from the friction of alternative viewpoints. This proposal might be thought to be vulnerable to the charge - often levelled at ‘safe spaces’ and ‘echo chambers’ - of encouraging undue avoidance of challenging ideas. In this paper, I will use the social exchange framework (Dutilh Novaes 2020) to flesh out epistemic respite as a practice of repeated argumentative exchange with trusted sources. This will make clearer why, and when, it is beneficial to all interlocutors. Namely, epistemic respite is beneficial when it is temporary, and when it makes engagement with wider populations more likely. I will then return to the topic of safe spaces and echo chambers, and argue that the charge of avoidance applies to the latter, but not the former.