Understanding Children’s Participation Rights Through a Postdigital Epistemology of Silence

Underpinning all young people’s participation rights is the right to accurate information that builds their capacity to claim their rights. In the postdigital world, access to information is increasingly mediated by technology, as are knowledge exchanges involving children. These knowledge exchanges are understood in social epistemology as testimony. In this chapter I conceptualise the right to information in postdigital research through an epistemology of silence to better understand the misinformation, disinformation, and deceit that pervades young people’s information sources. This chapter will focus upon belief based on testimony because it is pertinent to children’s right to information, which they have a right to seek, receive and impart, and which therefore includes testimony. The chapter closes with a consideration of what this means for postdigital research methodology, arguing that children and young people should take a central role, given that they are growing up in the postdigital world.