https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205211044193 Critical Sociology 1–16 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/08969205211044193 journals.sagepub.com/home/crs Epistemic media and critical knowledge about the self: Thinking about algorithms with Habermas Eran Fisher The Open University of Israel, Israel Abstract This article explores the ontology of personal knowledge that algorithms on digital media create by locating it on two axes: historical and theoretical. Digital platforms continue a long history of epistemic media—media forms and practices, which not only communicate knowledge, but also create knowledge. As epistemic media allowed a new way to know the world, they also facilitated a new way of knowing the self. This historical perspective also underscores a key difference of digital platforms from previous epistemic media: their exclusion of self-reflection from the creation of knowledge about the self. To evaluate the ramifications of that omission, I use Habermas’s theory of knowledge, which distinguishes critical knowledge from other types of knowledge, and sees it as corresponding with a human interest in emancipation. Critical knowledge about the self, as exemplified by psychoanalysis, must involve self-reflection. As the self gains critical knowledge, deciphering the conditions under which positivist and hermeneutic knowledges are valid, it is also able to transform them and expand its realm of freedom, or subjectivity. As digital media subverts this process by demoting self-reflection, it also undermines subjectivity. Keywords media studies, subjectivity, Habermas, theory of knowledge, critical theory, digital media, algorithms Introduction A good reason to think about digital media as socially transformative is their ability, indeed pro- pensity, to create new knowledge. The knowledge that digital media create—algorithmically ren- dered from users’ data—is not merely a commodity, sold to third-party actors (Andrejevic 2012; Fisher 2015; Fuchs and Fisher 2015; Scholz 2013; Zuboff 2020); more importantly, this knowledge makes part and parcel of digital media, underlying and enabling its function. As knowledge becomes not just the end-product of a system but also its condition of possibility, the very nature and function of knowledge in society also changes. What changes is how we know and what it Corresponding author: Eran Fisher, The Open University of Israel, 1 University Drive, P.O. Box 808, Ra'anana, 43107, Israel. Email: eranfisher@gmail.com 1044193CRS 0 0 10.1177/08969205211044193Critical SociologyFisher research-article 2021 Article